Journeys of Hope... with a Happy End

2022

International Conference Any | One Day the Future Has Died. Impossible Possibilities of Artificial Intelligence Date: October 27-29, 2022 Conference venue: Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst Leipzig (HGB Leipzig) Conference language: English Registration: any_one@hgb-leipzig.de (for capacity reasons, please indicate whether you would like to attend one or both workshops) |organized by Katrin Köppert, Nelly Yaa Pinkrah, Francesca Schmidt, and Pinar Tuzcu |in cooperation with Academy of Transcultural Exchange (AtA), DFG-Research Network "Gender, Media and Affect", netzforma* e.V |realized with the support of the Support Office, the rectorate and the Institute for Theory of HGB Leipzig In the age of Artificial Intelligence, on any given day, at some point most definitely, the Future has died. The Future, with capital F, seems to be perfectly synchronized, in line and aligned with the global mode of technological production. In this kind of Future in a hyper networked and digitized society, we witness new modes of extraction, monopolizations, surveillance; new types of environmental harm and damages as well as new codes of discriminations and exclusions which bring more climate change-induced provincialization, more competition and individualism. Not only does this model of Future not provide enough space for the many(-folded), its pretension lies in the misreading of the concept itself. Because in contrast to its usual connotation, the Future does not necessarily and always indicate a tomorrow or far away. But, as Michelle M. Wright and Rasheedah Phillips brilliantly show in their works, it is about a radical re-thinking of time and experiencing of temporalities that gives way to a broader and better understanding of stories, past and present, of todays, of tomorrows, of in-betweens (Fred Moten). futures – without capital F and in their plural form – always also happen now. In this conference, we aim to understand whether it is possible to embrace Artificial Intelligence despite its controversial application and employment in today’s digitized society. By looking at the limits and at times inaccessible promises of this technology, this conference explores the impossible possibilities of AI that go beyond the understanding and blunt imitation of pure cognition. It aims at continuing and opening up discussions with the prominent experts in this field to explore AI as an alternative to mainstream understanding of Future, and rethink it as an embodied experience, as a sensual, magical, mysterious, poetic technology, a technology of futures while keeping in mind that this technology does not only reveal the inequality and injustice embedded in the digital and social codes; it is also an experimental attempt, a lab, that is enthusiastic about discovering the possibilities of a decolonial, queer-feminist, capitalist-critical and ecologically networked society. For this, however, we need to declare the death or the end of the Future in the first place. With the Impossible Possibilities we think AI with Kara Keeling. We are concerned with the presence of AI, with what goes beyond its expression and produces a surplus that cannot be seen or understood, but is nevertheless present: «Whatever escapes recognition, whatever escapes meaning and valuation, exists as an impossible possibility within our shared reality, however one describes that reality, and therefore threatens to unsettle, if not destroy, the common sense on which that reality relies for its coherence.» (2019: 83). What is impossible to recognize is the possibility of AI. For what defies re-cognition exists in a world that is real but not fed into the normative discourse of AI as predictive computation. With this conference, we turn our attention to paradox as a condition of existence that has the potential to shake the common sense of AI. Impossible Possibilities does not stand for exposing the binary in the conundrum but stands for an invitation for exploring such a paradox productively. Thus, we are not so much interested in trying to define or examine AI through the lens of each diametrically opposed concept (McHardy et al. 2022: 17). Instead, the juxtaposition points to what runs counter to certain assumptions in unexpected ways. Precisely because what is possible cannot be known. AI, in our understanding, operates in the realm of the unexpected and unbelievable, too. We want to discuss AI against the fixations as either dystopian or utopian. To this end, we are organizing scientific-artistic panels and educational-political workshops whose goal is to dwell in paradox. That is, to stay with the impossibilities and interrogate them as possibilities without depending and relying on an accelerated Future we always urgently have to react to. However, for, as Indigenous scholar Kyle Whyte writes, the discourse of urgency is antithetical to the marginalized (2019). It takes slow science (Stengers 2018) and education policy, each in its own way, to address the power of the technological not (only) in its media upheavals but long continuities. For the Future, for some, has died every day, in the slowness of repetitive definitions, for example, of AI as the story of postmodernity. Therefore, what is needed is a «recursive conception of media that itself defines the conditions of possibility for communicative action, for politics, and for culture» (Sharma 2022: 126), in slowness and with the capacity to endure paradox. While taking (back) our time. Inasmuch as sciences, art, and political education are increasingly converging, science is more and more structured according to daily political trends, art hardly exists anymore without waves of scandalization, and educational policy seems to be synchronized with cultural education, it is the concern of the conference to bring the three fields closely together in order to practice slowness and contradiction together. The premise is to recognize that the place of discussion of AI does not reside in any of the fields alone. AI knowledge goes beyond academia, but it is also used and produced in exhibitions, cultural projects, and coding workshops. In this sense, the conference embraces all these fields and claims to be an interdisciplinary gathering. Not only because the conference takes place at an art university, but because part of the conference are practical workshops in the field of political education. The hands-on perspective is more than just the Maker Space. It is about bricolage, sampling, applying and coding alternative ways of imagining, understanding and making futures through technology in the best sense of a virtuality that is accessible for racialized and/or queer and/or trans* people and trans*feminists and/or disabled people and/or people from marginalized social backgrounds.

Third Concept, 2025

Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a double-edged sword, raising critical ethical concerns while transforming daily life. Its intersection with religion—often viewed as separate from science—offers a unique lens to explore consciousness, morality, and spiritual traditions in an automated world. Despite frequent tensions, science and faith have historically intersected in complex ways. Recent global efforts, including the 2025 AI Action Summit in Paris, highlight the need for inclusive, ethical, and sustainable AI. Scholars emphasize that AI development must respect religious diversity, reinforcing the urgency of frameworks that harmonize technological innovation with global spiritual and moral values.

AI & SOCIETY, 2021

This paper addresses the gap between familiar popular narratives describing Artificial Intelligence (AI), such as the trope of the killer robot, and the realistic near-future implications of machine intelligence and automation for technology policy and society. The authors conducted a series of interviews with technologists, science fiction writers, and other experts, as well as a workshop, to identify a set of key themes relevant to the near future of AI. In parallel, they led the analysis of almost 100 recent works of science fiction stories with AI themes to develop a preliminary taxonomy of AI in science fiction. These activities informed the commissioning of six original works of science fiction and non-fiction response essays on the themes of “intelligence” and “justice” that were published as part of the Slate Future Tense Fiction series in 2019 and 2020. Our findings indicate that artificial intelligence remains deeply ambiguous both in the policy and cultural contexts: we s...

Discover Artificial Intelligence, 2024

Artificial intelligence (AI) is reshaping humanity's future, and this manuscript provides a comprehensive exploration of its implications, applications, challenges, and opportunities. The revolutionary potential of AI is investigated across numerous sectors, with a focus on addressing global concerns. The influence of AI on areas such as healthcare, transportation, banking, and education is revealed through historical insights and conversations on different AI systems. Ethical considerations and the significance of responsible AI development are addressed. Furthermore, this study investigates AI's involvement in addressing global issues such as climate change, public health, and social justice. This paper serves as a resource for policymakers, researchers, and practitioners understanding the complex link between AI and humans. Keywords Artificial Intelligence • Future of humanity • Applications of AI • Ethical implications • Challenges and risks • Global challenges

2015

AI or Artificial Intelligence, beyond technical and scientific application, is one of the most common grounds of technological ideas explored in science fiction films as well as cyberpunk novels. Contemporary science fiction films and novels offer technological adventures where the boundary of human fantasies, adventures and romances interfuse with technological future which tends to blur the age-old conflict between science and religious belief. Blending with visions of science and technology, many of these science fiction films and novels portrait fantasies or quests (for salvation, immortality, overcoming physical illness, innovation, power etc.) as posthuman crises of a post human dystopia while this posthuman condition also offers determinations for transcending any earthly limitations of human existence. This paper intends to explore artificial intelligence within the area of popular science fiction novels and films, which incorporates the fantasy of techno-salvation in the near future of singularity through overcoming the carbon limitations of human, fusing essence of spirituality with technology as well as extending spiritual beliefs into technological faith. Investigating fictional depiction of “Artificial Intelligence” as a transhuman or posthuman idea in science fictions, the paper tries to trace out the potential patterns of technological salvation for humankind while it does also find humanizing or dehumanizing elements in these science fictions about the problematic and politicized power relations of binaries like human/machine or human/non-human. This paper is conducted through qualitative research, especially operating within textual analysis of William Gibson’s cyberpunk novel Neuromancer and visual methodology incorporating some contemporary sci-fi films like Steven Spielberg’s A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), Alex Proyas’ I,Robot (2004), Wachowski Brothers’ The Matrix (1999), José Padilh’s Robocop (2014) and Wally Pfister’s Transcendence (2014). Therefore, the paper contends that artificial intelligence, as a posthuman entity in popular science fiction and films, integrates the fantasy of techno-salvation where technology is fused with spirituality extending spiritual beliefs into technological faith. Thus, it tries to destabilize traditional concepts of spiritual beliefs; and at the same time, re-appreciates and re-appropriates the spiritual ideas of omnipotence, heaven, immortality etc. through better comprehending of science and technology.