AI Imaginaries and Counter-visions in Higher Ed

This event is part of the Sociology Seminar Series.

Drawing from science and technology studies, feminist studies, and labor studies, this talk examines how a range of technologies marketed as artificial intelligence (“AI”) are impacting academic working conditions and how academic unions and student organizers in the U.S. are responding. Academic workers have leveraged strategies that include collective bargaining, open letters, teach-ins, protests, and democratizing procurement to challenge dominant AI imaginaries. This talk argues that by examining contemporary AI’s relationship to longstanding university labor hierarchies and the military-academic-industrial complex, academic workers can develop robust counter-visions for greater workplace democracy.

The Sociology Seminar Series for Hilary Term is convened by Zachary Parolin and Carlo Perrotta. For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.