In AI We Trust. Power, illusion and control of predictive algorithms

Yehuda Elkana Fellowship Lecture 2021.

The inaugural Yehuda Elkana Fellow, Helga Nowotny, will give a lecture at the Central European University, in cooperation with the IWM and the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities at Bard College. The lecture will be preceded by a ceremony to commemorate Yehuda Elkana.

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. 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.

The Yehuda Elkana Fellow’s activities are held in partnership with Bard College through the Open Society University Network and supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations.

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