The Center for Digital Welfare is proud to invite distinguished researchers to the IT-University of Copenhagen for a research-based lecture series exploring diverse aspects of the current, and future, digitalized welfare society.

In this lecture, Noortje Marres will present on-going research about Artificial Intelligence controversies. This work starts from the recognition that contemporary AI is marked by the strategic deployment of controversy by many actors, including proponents, critics and moderates. As a consequence, AI controversies cannot be treated as 'naturally occurring' events, but must themselves be understood as artificial phenomena. To address this challenge, Noortje and colleagues are developing a provocative approach to understanding the role of controversial 'sciences of the artificial' (Suchman, 2008) in today's society. This approach deploys so-called 'controversy objects' to elicit exchanges among co-enquirers (Ricci, forthcoming) about what is problematic, important, possibly overlooked and missing in contemporary debates and disputes about AI.

Noortje's talk will be followed by a panel discussion with Brit Ross Winthereik (IT University of Copenhagen), Anders Kristian Munk (Aalborg University) and Giacomo Poderi (IT University of Copenhagen).

Noortje Marres is Professor in the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies at the University of Warwick. Her work contributes to the interdisciplinary field of Science, Technology and Society (STS) and investigates issues at the intersection of innovation, publics, the environment and everyday life. She studied Sociology and Philosophy of Science and Technology at the University of Amsterdam and has published two monographs: Material participation (2012) and Digital Sociology (2017). Noortje is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Siegen and the PI for the ESRC-funded, international project Shaping AI: Controversy and Closure in Research, Policy and Media.