Contestations.ai - Transdisciplinary Symposium on AI, Human Rights and Warfare

About the Symposium

Artificial Intelligence (AI), Big Data analytics and Automated Decision Making (ADM) are increasingly being used for surveillance, targeting, and autonomous drone warfare, in addition to proliferating misinformation on social media during war and conflicts. Conversely, these technologies are also leveraged for investigation of human rights violations as done by members of Forensic Architecture and Bellingcat.

How should researchers, scholars, government actors and civil society engage and act critically to highlight, investigate, and prevent the use of AI-based systems in perpetuating human rights violations and warfare and devise critical policies and practices that mitigate harms to society today? 

This symposium brings critical perspectives from AI researchers, social scientists, investigative journalists, and scholars in International Humanitarian Law (IHL), human rights, Members of Parliament, and NGOs dealing with these concerns.

We will examine these aspects in the context of ongoing conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine, among others globally, from the role of AI for spreading misinformation in war, to autonomous warfare, and investigative journalism to uncover human rights violations. 

The symposium will also insert the question of technology into its larger social and political context, particularly examining questions such as the geopolitics of technology, securitisation of the nation state-system, and the role of corporate interests in technologized warfare. Our aim is to encourage inter-disciplinary and critical theorizing on such topics, while developing an action agenda for future research and pragmatic societal outcomes.

*The symposium takes place just before the United Nations Day on October 24th.

For further information

Please register online. For further information, visit https://contestations.ai.

Co-organisers

The symposium is co-organized by Nitin Sawhney (Aalto University), Antti Tarvainen (University of Helsinki), and Salla Maaria Laaksonen (University of Helsinki). 

Additional Media/Arts Showcase

In addition to talks and panels, the event will showcase experimental works of media artists critically engaging contestations in AI technologies and society, curated by Matti Niinimäki, Department of Art and Media, Aalto University.