The Planetary Politics of AI: Past, Present, and Future
Equity + Justice, Media + Information, Engage in Global Challenges
Unfortunately, this event has been cancelled due to extenuating circumstances. If you have questions or concerns, please email us at psqevent@sfu.ca. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and we thank you for your understanding.
Professor Kate Crawford is a leading international scholar of the social implications of artificial intelligence. She is a Research Professor at USC Annenberg in Los Angeles, a Senior Principal Researcher at MSR in New York, an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney, and the inaugural Visiting Chair for AI and Justice at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Her latest book, Atlas of AI (Yale, 2021), won the Sally Hacker Prize from the Society for the History of Technology, the ASSI&T Best Information Science Book Award, and was named one of the best books in 2021 by New Scientist and the Financial Times.
Over her twenty-year research career, she has also produced groundbreaking creative collaborations and visual investigations. Her project Anatomy of an AI System with Vladan Joler is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the V&A in London, and was awarded with the Design of the Year Award in 2019 and included in the Design of the Decades by the Design Museum of London. Her collaboration with the artist Trevor Paglen, Excavating AI, won the Ayrton Prize from the British Society for the History of Science. She has advised policy makers in the United Nations, the White House, and the European Parliament, and she currently leads the Knowing Machines Project, an international research collaboration that investigates the foundations of machine learning. And in 2023, Kate Crawford was named on of the TIME100 list as one of the most influential people in AI.
Wendy Hui Kyong Chun is SFU’s Canada 150 Research Chair in New Media, Professor in the School of Communication, and Director of the Digital Democracies Institute. At the Institute, she leads the Mellon-funded Data Fluencies Project, which combines the interpretative traditions of the arts and humanities with critical work in the data sciences to express, imagine, and create innovative engagements with (and resistances to) our data-filled world.
She has studied both Systems Design Engineering and English Literature, which she combines and mutates in her research on digital media. She is author many books, her most recent being Discriminating Data: Correlation, Neighborhoods, and the New Politics of Recognition (2021, MIT Press). She has been Professor and Chair of the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University, where she worked for almost two decades and is currently a Visiting Professor. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and has also held fellowships from: the Guggenheim, ACLS, American Academy of Berlin, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard.
Admission Tickets Pricing
This event has an admission fee for attendance, with General and Community Admission options.
We are offering Community Admission tickets for individuals facing financial barriers in accessing paid programming. We encourage audience members to self-select according to their financial capacity.
A few guiding questions that may help:
- Are you and your family home/landowners?
- Have you obtained an advanced degree or attended private education?
- Can you easily access and afford healthcare services?
- Do you have debt and/or disposable income?
- Do you have citizenship in the country you live?
If you've answered no to most or all of these questions, please consider the reduced-price ticket. If the fee for the Community Admission tickets are a barrier to access, please email us at psqevent@sfu.ca, as we have free tickets set aside (subject to availability).
If you answered yes to most or all of these questions, we suggest the General Admission ticket.
Thank you to Indian Summer Festival and Meenakshi Das of Data is for Everyone for this sliding scale framework.
In-Person Accessibility
This event is taking place at the Djavad Mowafaghian Cinema (SFU Vancouver — Woodward's Building), located at 149 W Hastings St, Vancouver, BC V6B 1H7. There will be directional signage within the building to guide event attendees toward the Cinema.
The building is accessible at street level on the Hastings side or via a ramp on the Cordova Street Courtyard side (across from JJ Bean Coffee). There are 2 ramp entry points, one is located against the building, near the entrance to the Woodward’s Westbank Atrium (which houses London Drugs and Nesters) and one is located against the building, beside the alley. Both the Hastings doors and the Cordova Courtyard doors can be operated by accessibility buttons located beside the doorways.
Public washrooms are available on the B2, 2, 3 and 4 levels. All public washrooms are equipped with wheelchair accessible stalls. A gender-neutral washroom is available on the third floor.
Several EasyPark lots are located near the event venue. Click here to learn more about them. Note that other parking options are available, including street parking and other nearby parking lots.
The building is accessible by multiple bus routes. Plan your trip with TransLink’s Trip Planner. The Centre is also walking distance from the Waterfront and Stadium-Chinatown Skytrain Stations.
Public bike racks are located near the Cordova entrance.
Online Accessibility
Closed captioning in English will be available through thelivestream.
Technology requirements
Online attendees will need a computer (laptop or desktop), tablet or smartphone, with speakers or headphones. A microphone and/or a webcam are recommended if you would like to fully participate in the interactive portions of this event.
We recommend that you use a computer for the best experience of this event. Some interactivity and accessibility features are not available when using a smartphone or tablet.
Protecting your privacy
To ensure that we are using online event technology in a privacy-conscious way, we are following best practices for this online event series:
- We will only circulate the event link to those who are registered for the event
- We will password-protect the event
- We will enable end-to-end encryption
- We will not use attention tracking
To protect your own privacy:
- We remind you that whatever you say during the event is public, so please do not share sensitive information about yourself or others, and do not say anything you do not wish to enter the public domain.
To protect the privacy of others:
- Please do not record or photograph yourself, other participants, or the hosts during the event, unless permission is requested and given.
If you have any questions about this event’s accessibility, technology requirements or privacy, please connect with us at psqevent@sfu.ca.
Our community guidelines are intended to ensure the safety of all guest speakers and event participants, and to foster honest, socially accountable dialogue at our events. Thank you for respecting these guidelines!
- Above all, there will be zero tolerance for those who promote violence or discrimination against others on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, or disability. Anyone who incites harm towards other participants (whether through chat, video, audio or otherwise) will be removed at the discretion of our technical team and moderator.
- Don’t assume pronouns/gender/knowledge based on someone’s name or appearance. Please refer to people using the usernames and/or pronouns they provide.
- Approach this event with an open heart and open mind. Recognize that we are all here to learn and please be respectful at all times.