Lecture and Workshop: The New Structural Transformation of the Digital Public Sphere, Regina Kreide (Giessen)

a) Keynote Lecture by Regina Kreide (Giessen): Affirmative interference. How AI language systems are changing the political public sphere

Thursday, 17 October, 17-18.30. Faculty of Philosophy, Oude Boteringestraat 52, Groningen, Room Omega.

Abstract: The digitalization of everyday life and politics, in particular the use of AI-based systems, is rapidly changing interpersonal communication and has – sometimes unnoticed – significant effects on social processes and our everyday lives. Large technology companies know our purchasing needs long before we do, bots offer to be our “best friends” and “intelligent” language systems replace journalists and “explain” which candidate we should vote for in the next election. The tension that already exists in liberal capitalist democracy between democratic self-determination and capitalist and bureaucratic rule is supplemented by the problem that, although the idea of truth and thus the idea of a general will, which embodies the emancipatory project of democracy, still exists, the tendency towards a post-factual society is increasing in the course of the digital media revolution. In the long term, neither truth nor democracy can withstand this development unscathed.

The lecture analyzes how AI technologies are designed, what they do and also what they cannot do, in order to assess their potential impact and how they influence communication between people in public. It shows that these programs currently communicate “subserviently” with users and play affirmatively with the political context, thus fitting effortlessly into the context of a growing authoritarian liberalism.

b) Workshop, 17 October noon - 18 October noon

- Uğur Aytaç (Utrecht):  What is the point of social media? Corporate purpose and digital democratization
- Tim Christiaens (Tilburg): The New Structural Transformation and the Fascist Public Sphere
- Markus Patberg (Hamburg): Digitalization and Deliberative Systems: Towards an New Systemic Account of the Public Sphere
- Titus Stahl (Groningen): Habermas and Platform Power
- Peter Verovsek (Groningen): Reasserting Editorial Filters: Can Social Media Facilitate Opinion-Formation within a Marketplace of Ideas?

No registration is necessary to attend the keynote lecture. For attending the workshop, please register with titus.stahl rug.nl