The Critical AI Centre Launch Roundtable

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?

Join us in-person and online for a public roundtable discussion with internationally recognised voices on AI, marking the launch of the Critical AI Centre in the Department of Communications, Drama, and Film at the University of Exeter. Drinks and nibbles will be provided afterwards.

Andrea Medrado, Brett Zehner, and Patrick Gildersleve, University of Exeter

• Benedetta Brevini, University of Sydney
• Gabriel Pereira, University of Amsterdam
• Mona Elswah, University of Exeter
• Scott Wark, Goldsmiths, University of London
• Peaks Krafft, University of Edinburgh
• Becca Lewis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Phoebe Moore, University of Essex
• Thomas Dekeyser, University of Southampton
• Hanne Stegeman, University of Exeter

We also thank the workshop speakers who were unable to attend the public lecture:

• Hanan Badr, University of Salzburg
• Mél Hogan, Queen's University
• Sarah Shugars, Rutgers University
• Milagros Miceli, Weizenbaum Institute
• Dan McQuillan, Goldsmiths, University of London

Register now to attend in person or online. We ask for attendees to submit questions in advance to help shape our conversation.

For online attendees, the zoom link will be provided after registration.

Event supported by Project ADA.

Interested in Critical AI? Get in touch!

🌐 cdf.exeter.ac.uk/communications/research/centres/craic/

✉️ [email protected]

🦋 @craicexeter.bsky.social

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