Grace Kyungwon Hong (UCLA), Lisa Nakamura (UMich) and Wendy Hui Kyong Chun (SFU) held a panel discussion on anti-Asian sentiment before Covid-19. As many media accounts have recounted, Stop AAPI Hate reported that anti-Asian violence soared during the first wave of the 2020 COVID19 pandemic. From mid-March 2020 to the end of February 2021, 3,795 “Anti-Asian hate incidents” were reported to Stop AAPI Hate. North of the U.S. border in the Canadian province of British Columbia, “Anti-Asian hate crimes” reportedly increased by 717% in 2020. Focusing on recent developments in social media, this event examined the longer historical context of anti-Asian violence, interrogating why and how sentiments such as “hate” and acts of violence committed by individuals have become the primary framework for understanding Asian racialization. Within this context, Grace Hong spoke about “Affect, Sentiment, and the Human: Love and Hate in a Time of Anti-Asian Violence”, Lisa Nakamura discussed “Women of Color and the Digital Labor of Repair,” and Wendy Chun discussed homophily and its roots in internment camps.  This event was moderated by Kirsten McAllister (SFU), and respondents were Siyuan Yin (SFU), and Sun-ha Hong (SFU).

The Spry Memorial Lecture has been a consistent highlight in the School of Communication calendar since its inception in 1996. It is a joint initiative between SFU and the University of Montréal, named for Graham Spry, one of the pioneering advocates of Canadian public broadcasting. The lectures are generously supported by the Memorial Fund set up in his honour, and have a long history of tackling key issues facing Canadian media and its role in the national conversation. For the 2021 event, Spry joined with Media Democracy Days and the Digital Democracies Institute to bring together leading figures in Canadian media in conversation about race, media and building democracy in Canada.

Panelists Desmond Cole and Tanya Talaga, along with moderator Candis Callison, considered recent attention over the escalation of commentary on the representation of Indigenous, Black, and people of colour; the structural challenges that currently impede calls for greater diversity; and discuss how institutions and platforms can foster a more constructive dialogue. At a time when violent events internationally, nationally, and locally are making headlines on a frequent basis, the urgency of this panel was incontestable and it proved to be an unmissable event.

If you did miss it, luckily the lecture was recorded, and you can watch it here via the School of Communications’ YouTube Channel.

Prof. Kate Crawford is a leading scholar who has spent the last decade studying the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. She holds the inaugural chair of AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris, is a senior principal researcher at MSR, and an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney. Her new book, The Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence (available here to order) explores the hidden costs of artificial intelligence, from natural resources and energy to labor and data, and reveals how AI systems have saturated political life and depleted the planet.

She will be discussing the themes of her book with Wendy Chun. Wendy is Simon Fraser University’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, and leads the Digital Democracies Institute where researchers investigate themes of mis- and disinformation, authenticity, and counterspeech, amongst many others. The conversation will be a wonderful opportunity to hear two leading academics discuss issues that are crucial to our time, with repercussions pertinent to our lives, both online and in our communities. 

Dr. Wendy Chun is giving a keynote speech at the Figurations: Persons In/Out of Data conference on how the intersection of person and data is problematically ‘figured’ through networks.

“We’re drowning in an ocean of data, or so the saying goes. Data’s “big”: there’s not only lots of it, but its volume has allowed for the development of new, large-scale processing techniques. Our relationship with governments, medical organisations, technology companies, the education sector, and so on are increasingly informed by the data we overtly or inadvertently provide when we use particular services. The proverbial data deluge is large-scale—but it’s also personal. Data promises to personalise services to better meet our individual needs. Data is often construed as a threat to our person(s). Not every person predicated by data is predicted the same. The intersection between data and person isn’t fixed: it has to be figured.

This conference brings together an interdisciplinary group of researchers to explore how the person—or persons, plural—are figured in/out of data. Figuration might encompass any or all of processes of representation, calculation, analogisation, prediction, and conceptualisation. It cuts across multiple scales, epistemological modes, and disciplinary areas of enquiry. It tackles problems that cross into disparate disciplines. Our proposition is that it can help us think and study our increasingly datified present…” 

Speakers:

Professor Wendy Hui Kyong Chun, Simon Fraser University

Professor Jane Elliot, University of Exeter

Professor John Frow, The University of Sydney

Professor AbdouMaliq Simone, The University of Sheffield

Learn more on about the event on their website.

See details here.

Dr. Wendy Chun: Authenticating Figures: Algorithms and the New Politics of Recognition

What does recognition mean in an era of pervasive data capture and automatic pattern detection? Tracing the historical move from “pattern discrimination” to “pattern recognition,” this talk unpacks the logic and politics of recognition at the core of systems designed to automatically identify and classify users. It also examines the gap between user interactions, captured actions and algorithmic projections in order to understand how we have become figures in a drama called “Big Data.”

See details here.

Dr. Florian Cramer, a writer, photographer, filmmaker, theorist, and researcher at the Willem de Kooning Academy, Rotterdam, Netherlands, will be coming to Vancouver on Oct 30, 2019 to present on 1970/80s Mail Art, art that utilized postal exchange as a medium, and where Vancouver was a central site of its production.

His talk focuses on a number of issues in Mail Art that anticipate issues of contemporary Internet culture: junk mail, spamming, self-promotion, trolling, fascism as a means of transgression, network administration, and bureaucracy overhead and the resulting burn-out of participants.

As Vancouver was one of the centers of Mail Art, with the artist group General Idea around A.A. Bronson, the magazine FILE, artist-run centers such as Intermedia, Image Bank, and Western Front, his talk will be hosted in the core of Downtown Vancouver (Harbour Centre).

We welcome anyone interested in Florian’s talk to join us for an informal evening with other researchers, students, artists and faculty at the Diamond Alumni Lounge inside Harbour Center, Room 2065, from 6 to 8:30 pm.

• Date & Time: Wednesday, October 30, 2019, 6-8:30 pm
• Location: Harbour Centre, 555 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC V6B 4N4
• Room: HC2065 (Diamond Alumni Lounge)

HAI’s October 28-29 conference on AI Ethics, Policy, and Governance at Stanford University will convene experts and leaders from academia, industry, civil society, and government to explore critical and emerging issues related to understanding and guiding AI’s human and societal impact. Through plenary discussions, breakout sessions, and workshops we will explore the latest research, delve into case studies, illuminate best practices, and build a global community of research, policy, and practice committed to ensuring that AI benefits humanity. 

See the agenda  

Questions to be addressed include:

-What frameworks and structures are companies putting in place to address ethical challenges?

-How do cultural and policy approaches to AI safety vary across borders?

-How are governments organizing to harness the benefits of AI for societal benefit?

-Which metrics are critical to accurately tracking and forecasting the development of AI for policymaking?

-How will AI affect international security?

-What is the interplay between AI and civil society?

-How can we ensure that emerging technologies do not exacerbate racial inequity?

Keynote speakers include:

Joy Buolamwini, Founder, Algorithmic Justice League

Ken Denman, Former President and CEO, Emotient, Inc.; Venture Partner, Sway Ventures

Stephanie Dinkins, Associate Professor of Art, Stony Brook University

Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder, LinkedIn; Partner, Greylock Partners

DJ Patil, US Chief Data Scientist (2015-2017); Head of Technology, Devoted Health

Marietje Schaake, Dutch member of the European Parliament (2009-2019)

Eric Schmidt, Technical Advisor, Alphabet Inc.

Ge Wang, Associate Professor, Department of Music and (by courtesy) Computer Science, Stanford University

More speakers, additional members of the planning committee, further information on the agenda, and registration details will be announced soon.

Media inquiries: SHAI-Press@stanford.edu

For event related questions, please contact Celia Clark, HAI Events Manager, at celia.clark@stanford.edu.

This exhibition is part of our Networked Neighborhoods research project. 

“Visitors were invited to walk through exterior scaffolding where mounted audio recording devices are capturing visitors’ movements and conversations.

Jane Addams Homes was a public development built in 1938 that housed a diverse range of Chicago’s low-income and working-class families—mostly white families at first, then predominantly African American families from the 1960s until demolition between 2002 and 2007. The last remaining building is soon to be the site of the National Public Housing Museum.

In collaboration with the Stockyard Institute, Keleketla! Library installed exterior scaffolding on the building, where mounted audio recording devices are capturing visitors’ movements and conversations. These sounds are woven together into an audio tapestry, titled Listed. (2019), that is then fed into a radio broadcast transmitted from National Public Housing Museum.”

Learn more about the exhibition on their website.

Read Dr. Chun’s latest collaboration for the exhibit, Homophily: The Urban History of an Algorithm on eflux architecture’s website.