How to do things with and about AI: thinking, researching, writing / Comment aborder l'intelligence artificielle : réflexion, recherche, écriture

27 mars 2026 (10h00-16h30)

Pr. Tommaso Venturini

Pr. Tommaso Venturini, UNIGE ; Pr. Claudia Aradau, King's College London ; Pr. Tobias Blanke, University of Amsterdam

AI is now everywhere. Whatever topic we research – from social media to policing and from migration to environmental politics – is transformed by the uses of AI technologies. AI itself is a broad term, whose use and meaning is contested. We understand it here to include the algorithmic processing of data, whether using machine learning or deep learning algorithms or architectures. As AI is transforming our research topics, it is also transforming the process of inquiry – how to arrive at research questions, how we design investigations, the methods we use and how we write the research. This seminar introduces our experiences researching with and about AI across disciplinary fields. 

During the morning session, we will introduce two projects and discuss the various dimensions of the research process, including the notion of methods as ‘discordance machines’. Claudia Aradau will introduce research on AI technologies for security and surveillance and how we can engage with opacity, secrecy and elusiveness conceptually and methodologically. Tobias Blanke will explore the complex interrelations between deep learning and (digital) cultures, examining how new machine learning systems both shape and are shaped by cultural practices. To study these interrelations also requires a fundamental rethinking of existing digital methodologies.

During the afternoon session, we will focus on the relevance of research with and about AI for the participants’ PhD projects.

Claudia Aradau is Professor of International Politics in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. She is an interdisciplinary scholar working eclectically and collaboratively on the boundaries of several disciplines. Her recent research has focused on how digital technologies reconfigure security and surveillance practices, and how algorithms and machine learning recast relations between security, democracy, and critique. She is co-author, with Tobias Blanke, of Algorithmic Reason: The New Government of Self and Other .  

Tobias Blanke is Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Humanities at the University of Amsterdam and the Institute of Logic, Language, and Computation. He is also affiliated with King's College London as Visiting Professor of Social and Cultural Informatics. His academic background is in computer science and political philosophy. He has researched the relationships of computing with culture and society for almost two decades. He is currently the principal investigator of the ERC Advanced grant Deep Culture, co-editor-in-chief of the Cambridge Forum on AI – Culture and Society, and co-author, with Claudia Aradau, of Algorithmic Reason: The New Government of Self and Other .

UNIGE

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