International Workshop, organized by Anna Echterhölter and Markus Ramsauer in cooperation with the working group »How is AI Changing Science«, University of Vienna, and the ifk.

AI has given new instruments to the sciences, and the social sciences in particular, which have co-evolved with the production of data about societies. One of the key elements in unsupervised learning is clustering. Thus, this particular data practice sits at the core of modern Artificial Intelligence, which is based on artificial neuronal networks. Whereas classification operates by organizing labeled data into specific categories, clustering relies on cheaper, unlabeled data for deciphering similarities inside a given set.

The workshop poses the open question if unsupervised data clustering has the potential of identifying and generating new patterns of the social. Can clustering come up with tribes, discerned by patterns of movements identifiable from telephone data, political party affiliation, friendship or kinship-patterns that are not blood-related, and thus resemble totemistic orders? Or does automatization in the analysis of social data reproduce older hierarchies and familiar stratifications with necessity? While it is crucial not to fall prey to techno-utopian fantasies of non-situated (AI) technologies ‘overcoming’ race, class or gender, the transformative potential of clustering practices for analysis and reorganization of society and resource management in crisis will be discussed.

The Zoom link will be accessible via automated-order.univie.ac.at