Kate Crawford – Mapping AI: How to see planetary-scale artificial intelligence
Image by Kate Crawford and Vladan Joler from https://calculatingempires.net/about.html
Generative AI systems are at the heart of a profound shift in how we create, access, and define knowledge. The mass extraction of data across the internet, as well as from libraries and archives, raises pressing questions about who gets to build private AI models on public data. At the same time, AI systems are reshaping the planet in lasting, often hidden ways, becoming one of the largest planetary architectures built by our species and requiring vast amounts of energy, water, data, and labor to function.
This lecture will explore the dual nature of generative AI as a cultural transformation and a material force. Crawford will also discuss her recent research project and visual installation Calculating Empires: A Genealogy of Power and Technology since 1500, which places AI systems in a historical lineage of empires that used technology to centralize power and reshape societies and ecosystems on a global scale.
The event will be held in English.
Speaker
Kate Crawford is a scholar of artificial intelligence and its impacts. She is a Research Professor at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR in New York, and was the inaugural Visiting Chair of AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her most recent book, Atlas of AI: Power, Politics and The Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence won the Sally Hacker Prize, and was named one of the books of the year by New Scientist and the Financial Times. Crawford leads the Knowing Machines Project, a transatlantic research collaboration of scientists, artists, and legal scholars that investigates how AI systems are trained.
For access to the Academy, guests will be asked to show a valid photo ID. Backpacks and luggage with dimensions larger than 40 x 35 x 15 cm (16 x 14 x 6 in.) are not permitted on the property. There are no locker facilities available. You may not bring animals (with the exception of seeing-eye/guide dogs).
The Academy is accessible to wheelchair users and others who need to avoid stairs. Please email us at events@aarome.org if you or someone in your party uses a wheelchair or other mobility devices so that we can ensure the best possible visitor experience. If you are someone with a disability or medical condition that may require special accommodation, please also email us at events@aarome.org.