ENSO Seminar Series

Human agency in the age of algorithms

Abeba Birhane

Mozilla Foundation
April 6, 2023, 9 a.m. UTC // April 6, 2023, 9 a.m. in UTC
Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) have become pervasive terms that are increasingly found in ever expanding contexts and applications. At its core, ML/AI is a practice, however remote it may be, of an exhaustive mapping, automating, controlling, manipulating (and directly or indirectly influencing), the physical, mental, psychological, and social world. Embodied and enactive theories of cognition tell us that humans and the social world at large is not something that can be neatly mapped, formalised, automated or predicted. Yet, this does not stop researchers, big tech and startups alike from putting forward tools and models that claim to sort, classify or predict aspects of human behaviour, characteristics, and actions. The integration of these generative, classification, and predictive tools into daily lives has numerous implications for our techno-futures. In this talk, I discuss some of these implications including how languages are being altered as a result of automated content moderation.

Link to join/watch the seminar: https://youtube.com/live/PCZj0y1OUvE?feature=share