Scholars’ Convocation: I/Robot: The Social Life of Machines

Karla Erickson, Professor of Sociology
Scholars’ Convocation: I/Robot: The Social Life of Machine
Thursday, April 15, 2021, noon

Join via Zoom
Meeting ID: 968 8921 6478
Passcode: 774288

From navigational tools to self-trackers and from recommendation algorithms to roombas, more of our interactions are with autonomous machines or mediated by them. Due to the confluence of advanced machine learning; smaller, faster, and cheaper processing capacity; availability of massive data sets on which machines can train; and aggressive investment of financial and human resources, AI and robotic technology are leaping forward monthly, ushering in what many call a second machine age. In this talk, 2020–21 Humanities Center Fellow Karla Erickson walks listeners into how we arrived here and some of the social implications of living at the “slash” between machines and humans. What will be the labor implications of ever-more-skilled devices? What do our devices, and our relationship to them, tell us about human wants, needs, and shortcomings?  

This event is co-sponsored by the Center for the Humanities and Scholars’ Convocation.