Out of the eye - Seeing through Artificial Intelligence

Jaya Klara Brekke
Cryptopolitics - contentious visibilities in cloud geographies

Cryptography is becoming an increasingly fine-grained art of shaping conditions of visibility in the digital realm: encryption can make data unreadable unless in the possession of the correct decryption key; cryptographic proofs can prove statements about data without revealing the underlying information. Machine learning algorithms on the other hand depend on the ready availability of data, drawing connections and correlations across vast datascapes otherwise not visible to the human eye. This talk will draw up the alliances and rebellions that are taking place at the intersection of cryptography and Machine Learning algorithms.

Jaya Klara Brekke, writer and geographer of technology, Magma Collective/ Durham University
Jaya Klara Brekke is a geographer of cryptography. She speaks, writes and does research on how cryptographic techniques affect digital geopolitics at the intersections of power, visibility and value. She is a founding member of Magma Collective and recently Assistant Professor at Durham University, where she completed her PhD titled Disassembling the Trust Machine: three cuts on the political matter of blockchain. She is expert advisor to the European Commission on decentralised data infrastructures and is based in London from where she contributes to European cultural, policy and industry debates on power, visibility and the political economies of decentralisation. Her current research focuses on the intersection of cryptography and machine learning technologies.