CrAIC Launch Panel 3: Critical Thought After the AI Turn

Artificial intelligence is everywhere in today’s headlines, simultaneously hailed as a revolutionary breakthrough, feared as a looming threat, and debated as if it were an unstoppable force. But AI is not a singular invention: it is a shifting set of technologies and ideas, bound up with the values and power relations of those who build and govern it. To understand AI critically, we need to see through the hype and doomerism, and ask deeper questions: Who designs and legitimises these systems? Who benefits from AI’s promises, who shoulders the risks and labour that sustain it? And, ultimately, why is AI dominating the present moment, and how can we question, resist, and reimagine it?

This workshop marks the launch of the Critical AI Centre at the University of Exeter.

Panel 3: Critical Thought After the AI Turn

Chair: Brett Zehner

Speakers:

Becca Lewis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Dan McQuillan, Goldsmiths, University of London

Thomas Dekeyser, University of Southampton

Hanne Stegeman, University of Exeter

Scott Wark, Goldsmiths, University of London

In person attendance only, Roborough Studios RS2.

Event supported by Project ADA.

Host or Publisher The Critical AI Centre at the University of Exeter