33.3404, Calls: Anthro Ling, Applied Ling, Cog Sci, Comp Ling, Socioling/Germany

[The LINGUIST List]

LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3404. Thu Nov 03 2022. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 33.3404, Calls: Anthro Ling, Applied Ling, Cog Sci, Comp Ling, Socioling/Germany

Moderators:

Editor for this issue: Everett Green <everett at linguistlist.org>
================================================================


Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2022 02:46:22
From: Marie-Theres Fester-Seeger [fester-seeger at europa-uni.de]
Subject: AI as Interactional Human Culture: Language, Data Practice and Social Struggle

 
Full Title: AI as Interactional Human Culture: Language, Data Practice and Social Struggle 

Date: 30-Mar-2023 - 31-Mar-2023
Location: Frankfurt (Oder), Germany 
Contact Person: Marie-Theres Fester-Seeger
Meeting Email: fester-seeger at europa-uni.de

Linguistic Field(s): Anthropological Linguistics; Applied Linguistics; Cognitive Science; Computational Linguistics; Sociolinguistics 

Call Deadline: 31-Dec-2022 

Meeting Description:

In this interdisciplinary workshop, we discuss AI culture from a critical
anthropological, sociological and linguistic perspective. We treat AI-culture
as human and interactional practice and investigate it as embedded in wider
social structures as well as linguistic conditions. Within this view, users
and programmers of AI are no autonomous individuals but part of communities
based on social affiliation, language, shared cultural practice and economic
intentions. Together with scholars and practitioners, we seek to give
attention to the people behind the systems and to their societal and
linguistic embeddings and critically engage with the role of living human and
‘enlanguaged’ beings within AI systems.


Call for Papers:

We invite scholars from (socio)linguistics, computational linguistics,
(linguistic) anthropology, embodied and ecological approaches to cognition and
language, STS, media studies and related fields. At the same time, we invite
practitioners who work in language technology industries to engender an
understanding of the processes of the creation of AI realities in quite
practical terms.

AI-TECHNOLOGY AS HUMAN INTERACTION 
Given that human living beings construct and use AI technologies, we may
understand such technologies as a complex type of interactional culture whose
human participants are distributed in space and time. In this interactional
ecology, language data are central as they ground many constructions and
employments. And yet, languages are themselves an outcome of
socio-technological histories and histories of inequality and not ‘raw data’.
In this sense, data “do not offer access to the social world ‘as it is’ but an
access to the procedures whereby powerful organizations attempt to construct a
world on which they act” (Couldry and Hepp 2017:
163).

WORKSHOP DESCRIPTION
In this interdisciplinary workshop, we discuss AI culture from a critical
anthropological, sociological and linguistic perspective. We treat AI-culture
as human and interactional practice and investigate it as embedded in wider
social structures as well as linguistic conditions. Within this view, users
and programmers of AI are no autonomous individuals but part of communities
based on social affiliation, language, shared cultural practice and economic
intentions. Together with scholars and practitioners, we seek to give
attention to the people behind the systems and to their societal and
linguistic embeddings and critically engage with the role of living human and
‘enlanguaged’ beings within AI systems.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS
With the ambition to create an open discussion that is crosstheoretical,
cross-disciplinary and bridges the divide of academic and applied practice,
this workshop focuses around the following questions:

- How do social values and cultural traditions, among them beliefs about
machines, commercial interests, technological
affordances and notions of language frame the development of AI technology?

- How do traditions of writing, established language norms, the dominance of
English and people’s beliefs about language shape the programming of
speech-enabled AI or translation technologies? What is the role of
non-standardised forms,
language change and variation, sound-based social positioning, bodily gestures
and poetic functions in AI language models?

- How do users co-construct and experience technologies in embodied,
language-specific and culturally-shaped ways? How
does human-to-human interaction as well as social normative discourse impact
people’s use and co-creation of AI-systems in their homes or workplaces? What
is the effect of the affordances of machine interaction on users’ speech as an
embodied and conversational practice? Related to these practices, what kinds
of human language data feed back into servers of companies?

- And, finally, what do we learn from all this with regards to the question
what constitutes democratic, culturally-sensitive and human-centred AI?

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

For now, we are pleased to announce following keynote speakers:

Emily Bender, University of Washington
Joanna Rączaszek-Leonardi, University of Warsaw
Andreas Hepp, University of Bremen

As soon as we receive other confirmations, these will be added to the list.

WHAT TO DO

Please send abstracts (up to 500 words plus references) to
fester-seeger at europa-uni.de by December 31 2022.
The organizers expect to make final deciscions on the program by January 31
2023.

ORGANIZERS

Marie-Theres Fester-Seeger, PhD
Prof. Dr. Britta Schneider




------------------------------------------------------------------------------

***************************    LINGUIST List Support    ***************************
 The 2022 Fund Drive is under way! Please visit https://funddrive.linguistlist.org
  to find out how to donate and check how your university, country or discipline
     ranks in the fund drive challenges. Or go directly to the donation site:
                   https://crowdfunding.iu.edu/the-linguist-list

                        Let's make this a short fund drive!
                Please feel free to share the link to our campaign:
                    https://funddrive.linguistlist.org/donate/
 


----------------------------------------------------------
LINGUIST List: Vol-33-3404	
----------------------------------------------------------