Home
How is Artificial Intelligence Changing Science?
Research in the Era of Learning Algorithms

Image by Sentavio – stock.adobe.com
Upcoming online workshop:
Zoom, April 24, 2023
Sequence Models and the Scientific Field
Second HIAICS online workshop
More information on the workshop schedule
To receive the Zoom link, please register for the event via email to contact.howisaichangingscience@gmail.com
Upcoming workshop:
Bochum, May 15, 2023
Epistemological potentials: AI, robots and sensors
Workshop of the Working Group Data and Networks of the German Media Studies Association (in German)
„Edge AI“ is the name of a technical approach that is currently trending across domains: Implementing AI, more precisely: data-driven and adaptive systems, in a decentralised manner, for example in robots and sensors, independent of a continuous connection to a cloud.
Indeed, it cannot be ignored that the epistemic context of robots, sensors and AI is becoming increasingly important for thinking about the socio-technical conditions of digital cultures in the 21st century. Accordingly, it represents an extraordinary challenge for media studies of science and technology – not only for a history of the present as a media-historical and media-theoretical project, but for transdisciplinary efforts to reflect on its methodological and empirical complexity in general.
The workshop is a cooperation of the HIAICS research group, the Institute of Media Studies at the Ruhr University Bochum, and the Collaborative Research Centre „Virtual Living Environments“ (SFB 1567).
Project
How do artificial intelligence (AI) technologies affect research and science? By following this perspective, the project is less concerned with research on AI per se than with how different disciplines use AI as a tool. The central focus lies on how heterogeneous concepts and operations of the social sciences and humanities, on the one hand, and the natural and technical sciences, on the other, are integrated into applications of AI. Research on the latter will also explore the extent to which critical perspectives inform and accompany the use of AI. The project concentrates on artificial neural networks (ANN) because of their dominant status among current AI approaches. In order to extend the scope to an international level, it covers a variety of disciplines across Europe, including the natural sciences, social sciences, and the humanities. Hence, the project not only explores the similarities and differences among instances where AI is deployed in various fields, it also sheds light on the cultural and national specificities inherent to these processes.
Please find a German language version of the project description here.
We would like to thank the Volkswagen Foundation for funding this project.
More information on the funding program by the Volkswagen Foundation