Social Anthropology - Robots, AI & Society

mercredi 23 mars 2022

Ciné Campagn'art - Rogery

 

Séverine Lagneaux et moi revenons demain sur les lieux de notre film Routines dans le cadre du ciné Campagn'art.

ROUTINES

Réalisation : Séverine Lagneaux et Joffrey Becker 

Production : Jean-Frédéric de Hasque 

Montage : Bruno Tracq 

Durée : 36 minutes 

Filmé en Belgique dans un élevage laitier de la Région wallonne, Routines décrit le quotidien de l’exploitation et les reconfigurations liées à sa robotisation. En adoptant le point de vue des acteurs humains, animaux ou mécaniques, le film explore la façon dont la robotique et l’informatique transforment les interactions et les pratiques domesticatoires. 

Rien à voir, CNRS, Fondation Fyssen / 2022

lundi 7 mars 2022

Royal Anthropological Institute - Virtual Conference


Anthropology, AI and the Future of Human Society

6 -10 June 2022

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P14 - Controlled Environment Facilities and the Visualisation of Future Human Society

Convenors: Elie Danziger (Laboratoire d'Anthropologie Sociale [Collège de France - PSL, CNRS, EHESS]), Perig Pitrou (CNRS - PSL) & Teresa Castro (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

https://nomadit.co.uk/conference/rai2022/p/11152

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Living in a Loop

A Visual Ethnography of Routines in a Robotic Dairy Farm 

Joffrey Becker (RWTH Aachen University)

Severine Lagneaux (CRA-W [Belgique])

Robotic dairy farms constitute a special kind of controlled ecosystem. They form a space where relations between humans and animals combine with the activity of computer systems and robots in what appear to be a complete redistribution of relations in an adapted and a digitalised infrastructure. Do such hybrid systems raise new issues regarding the routines which characterize the activities in the barn? What new socio-technical arrangements are emerging from robotics and computer science practices?

Based on film, our ethnography shows that while robotic milking is a further step in the rationalization of milk production processes, the integration of robots, sensors to acquire data, and computer systems to process them introduces changes in the relation between the farmer and his herd. These systems therefore imply new arrangements between humans, animals and machines, which consist of a new method to achieve an optimized level of performance. Questioning the impact that socio-material organisation can have on activities in a community composed of humans, technical devices and non-humans, our ethnographic study resulted in a documentary film called Routines.

Taking place in a Belgian dairy farm of the Walloon region, Routines describes the daily life of the farm and the reconfigurations linked to its robotisation. By adopting the point of view of human, animal or mechanical actors, the film addresses the way in which robotics and computer technology contribute to transform not only the work activities but also the interactions and practices of domestication.

Ph.D Course - New technologies and the future of the human


PHD COURSE
28-31 March 2022

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Centre Universitaire de Norvège à Paris
54, Boulevard Raspail
75006 Paris

New ways of being human and social

The course is dedicated to an investigation of the imaginary projects of technoscience, in which new ways of being human and new ways of being social are being developed. This is going to be an exploratory course, mobilizing what we think we know about the human being into thinking and speculating about what the future might bring. In this effort the lecturers and students together will equally be searching for possible entries into an understanding.

Technological innovation in human-computer interfaces, medical breakthroughs in nano- and biotechnology, infrastructural transformations of urban orders, algorithmic government, new technologies to intervene in anthropogenic climate change, all seriously challenge established understandings of the human being and its environment.

Moral, existential and ontological questions

What will be the nature of the human being in the future? What are the potentials of new genetics? Of cloning? Can AI develop human qualities? What happens to social relations when we are primarily living in digital, virtual spaces? What social status do robots, avatar and digital selves acquire? What is the future of cities when scientists predict radical life-threatening climate disasters, and even their extinction? And, what do the new technologies of surveillance, climate regulations and "greening" policies entail for the institutional frames for human life?

In the age of technoscience, the very idea of what a human being is, has come to be fundamentally challenged: in new human-machine interfaces, in human enhancements technologies, in synthetic biology and genetic engineering, as well as new nature/culture relationships. Active transhumanist movements work for ideological and political backing for the investments in science that can bring about a new and potentially enhanced and even immortal human form. The idea of a future where humans live in space are not only the fantasies of California billionaires like Elon Musk, or sci-fi movies, but has become imaginative grounds for social movements, especially in the U.S. and Russia but also across the globe.

Lecturers: Joffrey Becker (KHK c:o/re, RWTH Aachen University), Anya Bernstein (Harvard University), Bjørn Enge Bertelsen (UiB), Kerry Chance (UiB), Annelin Eriksen (UiB), Alexandre Mazel (R3S, Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital & Sorbonne University, Paris), Alexandre Pitti (Laboratoire ETIS, CY Cergy Paris Université, ENSEA, CNRS), Knut Rio (UiB)

Information and program: https://www.uib.no/en/course/SANT906