Yehuda Elkana memorial event and a public lecture by Helga Nowotny on her upcoming book,
In AI We Trust - Power, Illusion and Control of Predictive Algorithms
A Zoom event by Central European University, the Open Society University Network, the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College, and the Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna (IWM)
Preceded by the Yehuda Elkana memorial event from 5 to 6pm
Welcome and introduction by Roger Berkowitz
Excerpts from the film “Yehuda”, directed by Helga Nowotny
“Yiddish protest songs – past and present”, performed by Isabel Frey
Reflections by Liviu Matei and Helga Nowotny
Yehuda Elkana was President and Rector of CEU from 1999 to 2009 and one of the early promoters of OSUN - the Open Society University Network.
LECTURE ABSTRACT / As we move into a world in which algorithms, robots and avatars play an ever increasing role, we need to better understand the nature of AI and its implications for human agency. In this highly original book, Helga Nowotny argues that at the heart of our trust in AI lies a paradox: we leverage AI to increase control over the future and uncertainty, while at the same time the performativity of AI, the power it has to make us act in the ways it predicts, reduces our agency over the future.
These developments also challenge the narrative of progress, which played such a central role in modernity and is based on the hubris of total control. We are now moving into an era where this control is limited as AI monitors our actions, posing the threat of surveillance, but also offering the opportunity to reappropriate control and transform it into care.
BIO / Helga Nowotny is one of the most prominent scholars in science studies worldwide, an area that counted Yehuda Elkana as one of its pioneers and promoters. For several decades she has been one of the most influential institution builders in European higher education and research. At times, she partnered with Yehuda Elkana in daring new academic and institutional endeavors.
Throughout her long and distinguished academic career at institutions in the US, Europe and Asia, Helga Nowotny has embraced and helped establish an interdisciplinary and engaged approach to the study of science, combining perspectives from the humanities, social and natural sciences - in particular from law, sociology, anthropology, history, and philosophy of science, mathematics and cognitive science - in order to be able to better situate scientific expertise, practice and impact in context. Her highly consequential research and publications focus on matters such as dealing with technological risks, coping with uncertainty, time and social theory, organization of science, gender relations in science and “the place of people in our knowledge” (the title of one of her studies). She has launched or helped establish influential new concepts or theories, such as “Mode 2” of scientific research.
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