Automation, Control, and Incompetence

On December 1st-2nd, 2022, members of the project »Filtering« held a multidisciplinary workshop on the topic of »Automation, Control, and Incompetence«. The organizers and guests elaborated the historical and cultural-political dimensions of automation processes, as well as the current challenges of HCI and technology design in the face of diverse societies.

How do practices of »filtering«—technical, racial, cultural, political, environmental, and otherwise—produce the ecologies of modern life? How might a theory of filtering encompassing technological and cultural operations better explain the forms of control, responsibility, and incompetence ordering modern life? This workshop addressed these questions and brought together scholars from media studies, history of science and technology, human-computer interaction, and informatics.

The workshop's aim was to reconceptualize filtering as a fundamental technique enabling human and non-human actors to shape environments through differentiation. The environments emerging from processes of filtering are interconnected: they encompass material, symbolic, and social dimensions while oscillating between automation, incompetence, and control. By considering filtered environments in AI, robotics, sensing systems, social media or the gig economy as powerscapes that are shaped by constellations of interests, we critically questioned entangled agencies and power relations. Powerscapes thus hint at hierarchical structures within policies, logistics, and labor. They point to the conflictive and algorithmic-driven interaction of diverse actors, entities and machines. Against this background, the workshop raised the urgent question of how filtering can be rethought as a responsible technology both in terms of design processes and with regard to emerging socio-technical environments.

Registration

The event was an on-site event and took place in the central laboratory of the Cluster »Matters of Activity« at Sophienstraße 22a in Berlin-Mitte. Participation was open to all interested parties.

Program

1 December 2022

9.00 am –10.00 am
Welcome and Introduction

10.00 am –11.30 am
Panel 1: Histories of Automation and AI
Chair: Alwin Cubasch

Ben Peters: Chernobyl 1986/2086: Ripping the Textile of Time Woven into Artificial Intelligence.
Michael Rottmann: Automation and Control around 1960. The Dilemma of Fine Arts.
Dinah Pfau: Filtering the ‘Real World’.

12.00 am –1.30 pm
Panel 2: Sociality of Digital Filtering
Chair: Shintaro Miyazaki

Florian Sprenger: Filtering Worlds – Sensor-Algorithmic Virtuality in Autonomous Systems
Ido Ramati: Grief Bots: Posthumously Filtering Your Personality
Anna Schäffner & Dominic Domingos: MoA Digital Filtering: Human-Robotic Interaction in Surgery

3.00 pm –4.30 pm
Panel 3: Politics/Policies of Filtering
Chair: Bernard Geoghegan

Adam Wickberg: Filtering Environmental Data and the Sustainable Development Goals.
Bernard Keenan: Law as a Filtration System.
Amira Moeding: »More data is always better.« How Practices of 'Filtering' Remain Hidden in Big Data Discourse.

2 December 2022

10.00 am –11.30 am
Keynote
Sebastian Rappen (Data & AI Principle, Tech for Sustainability, Responsible AI, Microsoft Switzerland)
Chair: Bernard Geoghegan (King’s College London)

12.00 am –1.30 pm
Labour/ Logistics/ Industry
Chair: Shintaro Miyazaki

Prem Sylvester: Filtering in Logistical Media: How Borderzones are Produced as Powerscapes.
Sylvia Kühne, Bettina Paul and Torsten H. Voigt: Differentiating Truths – On (Epistemological) Shifts in Deception Detection for Airport Settings.
Maija Spurina & Iveta Kesane: Narrated and Practiced Autonomy of Food Delivery Gig-workers in Riga.

3.00 pm –5.00 pm
Hands-On
Rethinking Automation, Control, Incompetence

5.15 pm –6.00 pm
Closing Remarks