Some thoughts on the impact of AI, the first part of a new series I am writing for Swivel Secure as I bring anthropological insights to the #AI conversation.
“I contain multitudes”: Code-Switching in the Age of AI
AAR 2023 CFP Emerging Technologies
As co-chair of the Emerging Technologies group at AAR I am very excited to share our call for papers for this year’s conference.
There are a few extra things to be aware of since we are still working towards program unit status. First, we do have a fairly tight deadline and ask that paper proposals for this year’s panel please be submitted no later than Friday, February 17th. Also, we are not yet able to accept proposals through AAR’s PAPERS system, so please e-mail your paper to Co-Chair Christopher Senn at cps5@rice.edu
AAR
Emerging Technologies
Call for Proposals
Theme: Religion and Emerging Technologies of the Self
Foucault spoke of technologies of the self as technologies that “permit individuals to effect by their own means, or with the help of others, a certain number of operations on their own bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct and way of being, so as to transform themselves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection or immortality.”
How might scholars of religion theorize the way people use emerging technologies to rebel against and reinforce the intersecting imperatives to thrive and find meaning while navigating the economic and legal restriction of the tools they rely on to foster their life worlds?
The Religion and Emerging Technologies Group welcomes papers that examine how new, experimental, and theoretical electronic or digital technologies are being used to reshape our bodies, souls, or thoughts – through materiality, cultures, and discourse.
Examples of new technologies of the self could include, but are not limited to:
- Pleasure technologies, e.g., teledildonics, virtual companions, romancing NPCs (both AI enabled and not)
- Ascetical technologies, e.g., methods of self-perfection and self-improvement, dietary and exercise gamification technologies, moral and spiritual enhancement applications
- Spaces of identity self-creation: AR, VR, proto-Metaverses, MMORPGs, games
- Technologies for getting rid of the self, and/or for reconceptualizing the self
- Conversations about ChatGPT5, a theoretical, coming technology
- Vaporware and technology-based scams, and startups
- Others not included in this list are also possible subjects
We also recognize the need to examine technologies of the self that involve emerging technologies. Emerging technologies may be those that we think we currently understand, those that are so nascent we do not yet fully comprehend their abilities, affordances, limitations, and possibilities, and those we think that we never will fully understand.
Submission Method
Please e-mail to Chris Senn at cps5@rice.edu
Deadline
February 17, 2023 at 11:59 PM
Review Process
Proposer names are visible to chairs but anonymous to steering committee members.
Co-Chairs
Chris Senn, Rice University, USA
Beth Singler, University of Zurich, Switzerland
Steering Committee Members
Jacob Boss, Indiana University, USA
Jordan Loewen-Colón, Queen’s University, Canada
Sarah Gallant, University of Toronto, Canada
Sharday Mosurinjohn, Queen’s University, Canada
Sharday.Mosurinjohn@queensu.ca
Victoria Lorrimar, University of Notre Dame, Australia
Website
Artificial Intelligence: Threat or Opportunity? – with Beth Singler by Faith at the Frontiers
New podcast from Faith at the Frontiers, where I get to chat about all things Anthropoligy, Digital Religion, and AI with Emily and Barney 🙂
New Post About my New Post :)
Today I start as the new Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich. I’m joining the UZH Faculty of Theology and working directly within the special research group or URPP on Digital Religion(s). Its almost a year to the day since I interviewed for this post, so its been a long time between fretting over what shoes to wear for my interview to fretting over what shoes to wear for my first day (answer, anything smart that I can still walk in with the ankle I sprained falling off my bike almost seven years ago!).
The move to Zurich has been both exciting and complicated. I’ve bitten my tongue alot around any pro-Brexit friends and family, but it would have been simpler (and less expensive) without that choice being made! But the new ‘Swiss Family Singler’ are all here, we have somewhere to live, and my son is back into the school routine (including moaning about homework again!). We’ve found a lovely if eccentric flat in Adliswil, about 20-30 mins by train from the famous Zurich Grossmünster, which my office is next to. Our flat dates back to the 1700s but has been recently renovated by the local architect who owns it, keeping many of its wooden beams and original features like doorways that my 6’2″ husband has to duck under 🙂 But we are all unpacked, and already well known at the bakery next door! We inflict our nascent German on them and they very occasionally give Henry free bread rolls, which hardly seems like a good deal for them!
This morning I walked from the Zurich HB to my office for my first day, passing cows on balconies…
… and I got straight into writing my first To Do list as a new Assistant Professor. There’s a bit on there about sorting out IT and email issues, but there’s also some really exciting projects that I’m still working on or about to launch: book projects like the Religion and AI book I’m witing and the Cambridge Companion on Religion and AI that I’m co-editing with Fraser Watts… notes for the course on Digital Religions I’ll be teaching at UZH from the Spring… travel plans for my speaking event at Princeton in November… notes for the presentation I’ll be making on AI and Religion at the URPP’s Digital Religion conference in just a few weeks… scribbled thoughts about a larger funded project on AI agency and Digital Religions… a reminder about writing a proposal for a pitch for a BBC radio documentary… there’s lots to do! I’m very excited about this new chapter in my career, and thrilled about finding a new home in Zurich where I’ll be surrounded by people enthusiastic about researching the digital world and modern technologies. And this view as I walk towards my office isn’t bad either!
Exciting New Job News!
I am thrilled to announce that I have been appointed the new Assistant Professor in Digital Religion(s) at the University of Zurich! I will be joining the Faculty of Theology in their URRP (University Research Priority Program) in Digital Religion(s) in October and I am very excited about working with the diverse array of research projects already in progress there. Along with continuing my anthropological research into religion and artificial intelligence, I will be also be teaching, supervising postgrads, and getting stuck into Faculty (and Swiss!) life. Apparently there’s a Lindt Chocolate Museum in Zurich…
Ich werde auch Deutsch lernen. Wünsch mir Glück!!
RPGeeks, Dungeons and Dragons and Science – Sci-fi Horror One Shot with Dr Beth Singler
Rogue Computers! Space Tourists! Duct Tape! Puppets!
There was a lot going on for the crew and passengers of the Air Car in this massively fun one shot I was invited to join by the RPGeeks. We also had a great time discussing the science behind the scenes, as well as some of the speculations about the future of AI!
(the WiFi on my end wasn’t great, but I can only blame our Robot Overlords trying to stop us talking about them… Or whoever had knocked the signal booster off the wall in the office next door when they moved in that week!)
RPGeeks: Sci-Fi Horror One Shot with Dr Beth Singler
BBC Radio 4’s Inside Science: Inside Sentience
An absolute pleasure to chat with Marnie Chesterton and Philip Ball about the recent claims made by a Google Engineer about their Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA) and its sentience…
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m001883c
‘A Visit to the Human Factory: How to Build the World’s Most Realistic Robot’, by James Vincent, The Verge
Here’s a fantastic new piece from James at The Verge, featuring a few quotes from this digital anthropologist I know…
A desire to project agency and intelligence onto inanimate matter, though, is deeply human, says Beth Singler, a digital anthropologist at the University of Cambridge. “You don’t have to go as far as Ameca has with facial features before people start bringing animated entities into what I call their cosmology of potential beings,” she tells The Verge. “There’s this sense that what is around us could be intelligence, and different cultures react to that in different ways.”
Traditions like Shinto and Buddhism are more open about this impulse to ascribe soul to objects, says Singler, but the same instincts run deep in the West. “We like to think we’re immune to this because we had the Enlightenment and became very serious and rational,” she says. “But I don’t see that. When I see people’s interactions with animated technological entities — and that can be everything from a robot to a Roomba — I see that same animistic tendency.” In other words: we still want to believe.
Patented: History of Inventions – Robots
I loved doing this episode of @dallascampbell‘s ‘Patented: History of Inventions’, from @HistoryHit. Listen to me talking about:
– pooping robots
– replacing monarchs with waving robots
– How Arnold Schwarzenegger is uncanny
– and much, much more!
Patented: History of Inventions – Robots
Professor Beth Singler 