Critical Voices in AI

Advanced computing technology – or artificial intelligence, can be framed as a key player in the shaping of knowledge, communication and power in the hands of a few hegemonic forces. From the datafication and monetisation of almost any tangible or un-tangible thing on planet earth, to the normalisation of efficiency and productivity as the highest possible targeted outcomes, AI systems materialise entanglements between global politics and power structures, geo-political governance on human rights and labour, finance, warfare, industrial innovation.

The series offer conversations to unfold the many ways in which those entanglements work, how they affect global and local decisions in education, healthcare, welfare, labour organisation, who is entitled to make those decisions or regulate them, who is affected and whose profits are secured by them. It also aims to frame those entanglements through multiple disciplinary and analytical perspectives, in an effort towards exercising our situated ways of seeing, mapping, framing, accounting, making sense and establishing shared ways of creating knowledge – as a provisional, culturally and historically situated practice – and how to use it. 

Through the voices of activists, scholars and organisations who have endorsed a critical stance towards AI systems, the series will offer onsite/online conversations presenting analytical tools, practices and collective resistance exercises of how AI can be contended and challenged, resisted or harnessed to contribute to social interests.

The series builds on the previously running workshop series Girls Just Want to Have Sc(AI)ence, which had successfully engaged scholars and participants from private and public sectors from all over the world.

Welcome to join in your critical voice with ours!

If you wish to know more about the series, please contact valentina.fantasialucs.luse

The organising team:

Valentina Fantasia, Stefan Larsson, Gaye Askin, Samantha Stedtler, Laetitia Tanqueray

Dear all,

We are delighted to invite you to the first seminar of the Critical Voices in AI series.

Critical Voices in AI 

The series builds on and continues our previous workshop series Girls just want to have Sc(AI)ence.Through the voices of activists, scholars and organisations endorsing a critical stance towards AI systems, the series will offer conversations on AI systems as sociotechnical artefacts, and how we can collectively challenge, practice resistance or harness those systems to help us create more equitable, inclusive and resilient communities and societies.

The seminar

On May 12th, 15-17, we will have the pleasure of joining one of the 2026 Pufendorf lectures by Prof.Elizabeth Anderson, titled "The 21st-century Rise of Techno-authoritarianism". 

Prof. Elizabeth Anderson is John Dewey Distinguished University Professor of Philosophy and Women's & Gender Studies, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and she is the 2026 Pufendorf speaker.

Title: "The 21st-century Rise of Techno-authoritarianism".

The lecture will be streamed on Zoom (upon registration) and attended on site, as part of the Pufendorf series (please note, online participation is not possible for the other two lectures)

The lectures are all open to the public and take place from in Segerfalksalen, BMC, Sölvegatan 17, Lund. More information attached.

Please register here by May 10th.

We look forward to seeing you at the workshop