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  • CRITICAL x DESIGN: Katherine Behar

    In “Digitally Divided,” Behar presents her artwork with a focus on how algorithms dismantle and rearrange us. Across culture, algorithms have been unleashed to allocate complex systems into manageable portions. They mete out standardization and suppress idiosyncrasy across diverse and defiant populations of human and nonhuman objects, in ways that are socially, technically, and conceptually reductive. This lecture brings together examples of Behar’s videos, interactive installations, sculptures, and performances, alongside episodes from media history and popular culture to explore this core notion of being “digitally divided.”

  • CRITICAL x DESIGN: Ben Grosser

    How are numbers on Facebook changing what we "like" and who we "friend"? Why does a bit of nonsense sent via email scare both your mom and the NSA? What makes someone mad when they learn Google can't see where they stand? From net art to robotics to supercuts to e-lit, Ben Grosser will discuss several artworks that illustrate his methods for investigating the culture of software.

  • CRITICAL x DESIGN: Joy Lisi Rankin

    American historians debate whether Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Depression-era legislation was, in fact, a New Deal, or perhaps an “Old Deal” or a “Raw Deal.” Considering multiple perspectives and voices, combined with the long sweep of history, stokes this lively, ongoing debate. In this CRITICALxDESIGN talk, I’ll turn my attention to American computing in the 1960s and 1970s to consider whether the academic networks of that era may be inspiration for...

  • Dissonance: Understanding the Social Implications of AI

    "If we are going to augment humanity with the machine, we need to do it in a way that doesn’t bring along our mistakes of the past." — Gregory Simpson, Chief Technology Officer for Synchrony Financial Through mobile phones, the Internet of Things, and web computing, every single day around the globe we create a […]

  • CRITICAL x DESIGN: Lucy Suchman

    In June of 2018, following a campaign initiated by activist employees within the company, Google announced its intention not to renew a US Defense Department contract for Project Maven, an initiative to automate the identification of military targets based on drone video footage. Defendants of the program argued that that it would increase the efficiency and effectiveness of US drone operations, not least by enabling more accurate recognition of those who are the program’s legitimate targets and...

  • Ethics & Politics of AI: Anna Lauren Hoffmann

    Values of fairness, antidiscrimination, and inclusion occupy a central place in the emerging ethics of data and algorithms. Their importance is underscored by the reality that data-intensive, algorithmically-mediated decision systems—as represented by artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML)—can exacerbate existing (or generate new) injustices, worsening already problematic distributions of rights, opportunities, and wealth. At the same time, critics of certain “fair” or “inclusive” approaches to the design and implementation of these systems have illustrated their limits...