The question of ownership has not been addressed enough in discussions about the politics of design of digital technologies. Whereas many approaches to design practice have recognised unfair decision-making processes, oppressive power-dynamics, and several instances of structural injustice, most of them fail to propose a political-economic alternative that addresses the ways in which the processes are owned. This has rendered many designers incapable of futuring digital technologies outside of the self-fulfilling prophecies professed by the different neoliberal capitalist institutions.

This paper critically addresses current debates on the digital transformation of the public sphere. It responds to two contrasting responses to this transformation: the school of destruction, which expresses pessimism about the design of social media, and the school of restoration, which advocates for the redesign of social media to align with normative conceptions of the public sphere. However, so far these responses have omitted an explicit philosophical reflection on the relationship between politics, technology and design.

Why is there an ethics of X for some X but not others? There is a thriving academic research program of medical ethics, but not of the ethics of travel or of fashion. In this paper, I explore this question and apply it to AI and other information technologies. Is there a distinctive ethics of AI or ML or can they be subsumed under a broader type of applied ethics of technology? Recently, Heilinger 2022 has suggested that thinking there is a distinctive ethics of AI is as misguided as thinking there is a distinctive ethics of electricity.

If the challenges AI introduces to the classroom are to be addressed adequately, and educational care deployed effectively in the process, a considerable burden of responsibility and additional work is likely to be placed upon the teachers. However, teachers are already overburdened in their professional capacities (Stacey et al. 2023); adding to their workload could have negative effect not only on their performance but also on the performance of the whole educational system (Creagh et al. 2023). What is more, AI might come to disrupt education not only in terms of workplace efficiency.

Various past and present conflicts suggest that energy can be used as a weapon (Tsafos 2022; LaBelle 2023). Affirming that energy is a weapon can mean and imply different things. It can refer to energy policies, energy and environmental laws and regulations, energy businesses, or energy socio-technical systems such as power plants or transmission lines. It can mean that a specific energy-related issue has been used to either start military hostilities or during warfare. It can indicate intrastate affairs or broader interstate geopolitical equilibria.

There is established concern that the deployment of autonomous weapons and information systems may lead to ‘moral deskilling’ of military professionals (Vallor 2013, 2015). Most of what has been written about the conditions needed to cultivate martial virtues has focused on kinetic operations, with comparatively little exploring the deskilling of intelligence practitioners and institutions (Meerveld and Lindelauf 2022). 

Technological artefacts have become “world objects” – they affect the world as a whole. This becomes increasingly evident considering the imprint of their development and use on our global natural environment. The growing awareness of the entanglement of humans, their practices, and their technological artefacts with their natural environments goes along with growing uncertainty. The rising number of experiences with the catastrophic consequences of climate change and environmental crises are increasingly shaking many people’s belief in a stable course of life and of the future.

When discussing digital surveillance phenomena, one image persistently comes to mind: the panopticon. In this paper, we aim to connect inquiries into AI's usage across political, economic, and social domains with the panopticon concept. Automated systems, fueled by data, monitor our preferences and desires, subtly shaping them. Through smartphones, computers, or smartwatches, individuals willingly, without knowing it though, carry their surveillance tools. 

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (e.g., machine learning, generative AI) have led to an increased interest in its application in educational settings. AI companies hope to revolutionise teaching and learning by tailoring material to the individual needs of students, automating parts of teachers’ jobs, or analyse educational data to optimise the delivery of content. The main goal of this presentation is to consider the role of imaginaries in shaping concrete practices and understandings of educational AI. 

The theme of technological breakdown, error, failure, or malfunction has, in a certain way, always been present in the history of the philosophy of technology. From Heidegger’s hammer to contemporary discussion of algorithmic bias, technological failure has been seen as revealing of something, as a means to obtain knowledge about technology or the world. For example, Verbeek (2004, p.

In this paper, I draw on pragmatist philosophy to assess the impact of educational AI (AIED) on the democratic dimension of education. AIED is expected to facilitate teaching and learning by personalizing content to the needs of students, automating parts of teachers’ jobs, and monitoring students’ performance and behavior, among others. However, I argue that we should pay close attention to AIED’s impact on the social development of students and the civic values and attitudes it is going to promote.

The recent successes and promises of artificial intelligence (AI) have given rise to a debate about the so-called ‘future of work’. Within this debate, economists discuss the likelihood that AI automates so many jobs that there will be structural unemployment. Ethicists discuss the moral implications of working with AI or losing one’s job to AI. Two moral issues are at the heart of this debate: the socio-economic impact and the existential impact of automation.

In his re-interpretation of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Axel Honneth (2014) builds a theory of justice which places the political public sphere as a central component for establishing what he calls ‘social freedom’ (individual autonomy realized in institutions and practices of mutual recognition).

Currently, there is significant concern about how AI-driven media platforms feature a logic of reactive and affective interaction, emotional mobilization, and moral outrage rather than lucid, political argumentation. Further, there is rising debate about whether platform companies take advantage of the unrelenting human hunger for bonding, reward, and the bestowal of esteem, exploiting vital needs for recognition as a monetizable vulnerability.

This talk examines the limitations of recognition theory by arguing that it takes relations between adults as paradigmatic. It challenges how Honneth’s three modes of recognition apply to children and use the example of educational AI to question how technologies should recognize children’s needs, rights and social contributions. First, children may not have yet fully acquired the capacity to recognize their needs. They often require guidance and care to do so and express their experiences of neglect.

This discussion addresses the question of how being subjected to pattern recognition by AI affects the possibilities of identity formation. Recognition theory explores how a subject (individually and collectively) shapes the self, its sense of dignity and esteem in its relationships with others (Honneth, Taylor). If we replace the ‘Other’ in the recognition relationship with artificial intelligence, questions arise about what we lose and what we gain in terms of social recognition. Is pattern recognition equivalent to patterned identity?

Hegel’s analysis of the “struggle for recognition” can be used to understand human-technology relations from a political perspective. This political perspective can consequently help us to appreciate how technologies like robots can come to have a role in political life through our ability to experience solidarity with such technologies, due to the recognition that technologies serve roles in society functionally equivalent to the social roles of humans.