KIM HfG continues the partnership with transmediale festival also in 2020 with a panel on the cultural implications of machine learning statistical models and a workshop on adversarial attacks and AI vulnerabilities as part of the End to End symposium.

 

transmediale festival
End to End symposium

Saturday, 01.02.2020, 15:30 to 17:00
Volksbühne Berlin, Großes Haus
Linienstraße 227, 10178 Berlin

Exchange #5: Neural Network Cultures

Presented and moderated by Matteo Pasquinelli (KIM HfG Karlsruhe). With Stephanie Dick (University of Pennsylvania), Katharine Jarmul (DropOut Labs), Tega Brain (New York University) and Fabian Offert (University of California Santa Barbara).

What happens as networks transition from horizontal structures for end to end exchange to neural networks extracting and centralizing data into new monopolies? Science historian Stephanie Dick analyzes how statistical modeling has been integral to developing computation and AI, while data scientist Katharine Jarmul explains deep learning’s blind spots and what escapes the algorithmic eye. Fabian Offert and Tega Brain will respond in a joint conversation with Dick and Jarmul.

 


 

Stephanie Dick is an Assistant Professor in History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. She holds a PhD in History of Science from Harvard University. Stephanie works on the history of computing, mathematics, and artificial intelligence. Her current book project Making Up Minds: Computing, Proof, and AI in the Postwar United States examines historical efforts to automate mathematical proof.

Katharine Jarmul is Head of Product at DropoutLabs, a company enabling privacy-preserving machine learning, and a passionate and internationally recognized data scientist, programmer, and lecturer. Her work and research focuses on securing data for data science workflows. Previously, she held numerous roles at large companies and startups in the US and Germany, implementing data processing and machine learning systems with a focus on reliability, testability, privacy and security. Jarmul is an author for O‘Reilly and frequent keynote speaker at international software and AI conferences.

Tega Brain is an Australian born artist examining ecology, environmental engineering and the use of data driven systems. Her work has taken the form of dysfunctional devices, eccentric infrastructures and experimental information systems. Tega is an Assistant Professor of Integrated Digital Media at New York University. She works with the Processing Foundation on the Learning to Teach conference series and p5js project. Tega has been awarded fellowships at Data & Society, Eyebeam, and the Australia Council for the Arts.

Fabian Offert is a critical machine vision researcher in the DFG research project Synthetic Images as a Means of Knowledge Production. He is also a doctoral candidate and Regent’s Fellow in the Media Arts and Technology program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His dissertation examines the epistemic and aesthetic questions raised by neural networks as contemporary image-making machines.

Matteo Pasquinelli is Professor in Media Philosophy at the University of Arts and Design in Karlsruhe, where he is coordinating the research group on Artificial Intelligence and Media Philosophy KIM. He recently edited the anthology Alleys of Your Mind: Augmented Intelligence and Its Traumas (Meson Press) among other books. His research focuses the intersection of cognitive sciences, digital economy and machine intelligence. For Verso Books Pasquinelli is preparing a monograph provisionally titled The Eye of the Master: Capital as Computation and Cognition.

 


 

Research Workshop ‘Adversarial Hacking in the Age of AI”

What does it mean to hack AI? How can hacking techniques disclose the workings of AI and produce new knowledge and awareness about it? In January 2020, transmediale festival and KIM HfG organise a research workshop inviting PhD students, artists, scientists, mathematicians, hackers, and activists to map and question the vulnerabilities of AI. The workshop call has resulted in more than 70 applications from all over the world, crossing disciplines like computer science, media art, mathematics, hacking, graphic design and cultural theory to name just a few. 30 selected participants will gather at the end of January in Berlin for a two-day intense workshop to discuss projects, readings and listen to inputs by Stephanie Dick, Tega Brain and Fabian Offert among others.

Impressions of the workshop


 

Panels and workshop are presented in cooperation with transmediale with the support of the Volkswagen Stiftung program AI and the Society of the Future and are organised by Kristoffer Gansing and Daphne Dragona (transmediale), Matteo Pasquinelli and Ariana Dongus (KIM HfG).