7,521 research outputs found
The Globalization of Artificial Intelligence: African Imaginaries of Technoscientific Futures
Imaginaries of artificial intelligence (AI) have transcended geographies of the Global North and become increasingly entangled with narratives of economic growth, progress, and modernity in Africa. This raises several issues such as the entanglement of AI with global technoscientific capitalism and its impact on the dissemination of AI in Africa. The lack of African perspectives on the development of AI exacerbates concerns of raciality and inclusion in the scientific research, circulation, and adoption of AI. My argument in this dissertation is that innovation in AI, in both its sociotechnical imaginaries and political economies, excludes marginalized countries, nations and communities in ways that not only bar their participation in the reception of AI, but also as being part and parcel of its creation.
Underpinned by decolonial thinking, and perspectives from science and technology studies and African studies, this dissertation looks at how AI is reconfiguring the debate about development and modernization in Africa and the implications for local sociotechnical practices of AI innovation and governance. I examined AI in international development and industry across Kenya, Ghana, and Nigeria, by tracing Canadaâs AI4D Africa program and following AI start-ups at AfriLabs. I used multi-sited case studies and discourse analysis to examine the data collected from interviews, participant observations, and documents.
In the empirical chapters, I first examine how local actors understand the notion of decolonizing AI and show that it has become a sociotechnical imaginary. I then investigate the political economy of AI in Africa and argue that despite Western efforts to integrate the African AI ecosystem globally, the AI epistemic communities in the continent continue to be excluded from dominant AI innovation spaces. Finally, I examine the emergence of a Pan-African AI imaginary and argue that AI governance can be understood as a state-building experiment in post-colonial Africa. The main issue at stake is that the lack of African perspectives in AI leads to negative impacts on innovation and limits the fair distribution of the benefits of AI across nations, countries, and communities, while at the same time excludes globally marginalized epistemic communities from the imagination and creation of AI
Endogenous measures for contextualising large-scale social phenomena: a corpus-based method for mediated public discourse
This work presents an interdisciplinary methodology for developing endogenous measures of group membership through analysis of pervasive linguistic patterns in public discourse. Focusing on political discourse, this work critiques the conventional approach to the study of political participation, which is premised on decontextualised, exogenous measures to characterise groups. Considering the theoretical and empirical weaknesses of decontextualised approaches to large-scale social phenomena, this work suggests that contextualisation using endogenous measures might provide a complementary perspective to mitigate such weaknesses.
This work develops a sociomaterial perspective on political participation in mediated discourse as affiliatory action performed through language. While the affiliatory function of language is often performed consciously (such as statements of identity), this work is concerned with unconscious features (such as patterns in lexis and grammar). This work argues that pervasive patterns in such features that emerge through socialisation are resistant to change and manipulation, and thus might serve as endogenous measures of sociopolitical contexts, and thus of groups.
In terms of method, the work takes a corpus-based approach to the analysis of data from the Twitter messaging service whereby patterns in usersâ speech are examined statistically in order to trace potential community membership. The method is applied in the US state of Michigan during the second half of 2018â6 November having been the date of midterm (i.e. non-Presidential) elections in the United States. The corpus is assembled from the original posts of 5,889 users, who are nominally geolocalised to 417 municipalities. These users are clustered according to pervasive language features. Comparing the linguistic clusters according to the municipalities they represent finds that there are regular sociodemographic differentials across clusters. This is understood as an indication of social structure, suggesting that endogenous measures derived from pervasive patterns in language may indeed offer a complementary, contextualised perspective on large-scale social phenomena
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Citizenship Capabilities and Instant Messaging in Western Kenya: an Intersectional Approach
This doctoral research project contributes to understanding the role of WhatsAppâthe most used social media platform in Kenyaâin citizen engagement processes. Paying particular attention to inequalities, power dynamics, and the need to account for the postcolonial context of Kenya, the project develops a theoretical framework that combines the Capability Approach (CA) and critical citizenship studies to conceptualise citizen engagement as relational and multi-layered citizenship. It draws on the theory of affordances to understand WhatsApp as an artefact and uses intersectional feminism alongside the CA to study the interaction between WhatsApp and the citizenship capabilities. The projectâs methodology follows a situated knowledges approach that focuses on discourse and a digital ethnography that encompasses multiple methods across offline and online spaces. Based on research with young people in the county of Busia, this thesis first identifies a set of citizenship capabilities including mattering, belonging and respect, in addition to what may be considered more obvious citizenship capabilities such as participating in decision-making or exercising rights. Second, in addition to processes that serve as conversion factors that help to âactivateâ citizenship, the research also highlights the role of performative citizenship practices as conversion processes in themselves. Third, the study identifies a set of WhatsApp affordances which interact with these conversion processes and can help to activate or enact citizenship. These affordances emphasise WhatsAppâs social, discursive and agentic possibilities among private and relevant groups of people, helping to build and perform citizenship as an inwards and intimate process before enacting it in the public sphere. Finally, the thesis argues that the meanings attached to the capabilities as well as the conversion factors vary depending on where people are situated across axes of oppression. So do WhatsAppâs affordances. Relying on instant messagingâs affordances without taking these inequalities into account can further exclude people from valued capabilities
The Ephemeral City : Songs for the Ghost Quarters
The towers of the Stockholm skyline twine with radio transmissions, flying out over the city, drifting down through the streets and sinking into the underground telephone system below. Stockholm has buildings that have been there for centuries, but is also full of modern and contemporary architectures, all jostling for their place in parallel collective memory. In taking the city up as a subject, this artistic PhD project in music expands allegories to these architectural instruments into the world of the mechanical and the electrical. By taking up and transforming the materials of the cityscape, this project spins ephemeral cities more subtle than the colossal forces transforming the cityscape. The aim is to empower urban dwellers with another kind of ownership of their city.The materials in the project are drawn around themes of urban memory and transformation, psychogeography and the ghosts of the imagined city. There are three questions the artistic works of this project reflect on and address. The first is about the ability of city-dwellers to regain or create some sense of place, history or belonging through the power of their imaginations. The second reflects on the possibility for imagined alternatives to re-empower a sense of place for the people who encounter them. The third seeks out the points where stories, memories, or alternative futures are collective, at what point are they wholly individual, and how the interplay between them plays out in listening.There is an improvisatory practice in how we relate to urban environments: an ever-transforming inter-play between the animate and inanimate. Each individual draws phantoms of memory and imagination onto the cityscape, and this yields subtle ways people can be empowered in their surroundings. The artistic works of this project are made to illuminate those subtleties, centering around a group of compositions, improvisations, artistic collaborations and sound installations in music and sound, utilizing modular synthesizers, field recordings, pipe organs, multi-channel settings; PureData and SuperCollider programs, string ensembles with hurdy-gurdy and nyckelharpa or violin, and sound installations. This choice of instruments is as an allegory to the architecture of Stockholm. The final result is a collection of music and sound works, made to illuminate the imagined city. Taken as a whole, the works of the project create an imaginary cityâThe Ephemeral Cityâin order to argue that this evocation of ephemeral space is a way to empower urban dwellers through force of imagination, immune to the vast forces tearing through the fabric of Stockholm life by virtue of the ghostly, transitory and mercurial, as compelling to the inner eye as brick and mortar to the outer life
Interdisciplinarity as a political instrument of governance and its consequences for doctoral training
UK educational policies exploit interdisciplinarity as a marketing tool in a competitive educational world by building images of prosperous futures for society, the economy, and universities. Following this narrative, interdisciplinary science is promoted as superior to disciplinary forms of research and requires the training of future researchers accordingly, with interdisciplinary doctoral education becoming more established in universities.
This emphasis on the growth of interdisciplinary science polarises scholarsâ views on the role of academic research between the production of knowledge on the one hand and knowledge as an economic resource at the other end of the spectrum. This research asks: what is the rationale behind the perceived value of interdisciplinary research and training, and how does it affect graduate studentsâ experiences of their PhD?
Based on a practice theory perspective for its suitability in generating insights into how universityâs social life is organised, reproduced and transformed, the doctorate is conceptualised as sets of interconnected practices that are observable as they happen. This current study, therefore, comprised two stages of data collection and analysis; the examination of documents to elucidate educational policy practices and an educational ethnography of an interdisciplinary doctoral programme.
This study found interdisciplinary doctoral training is hindered by the lack of role models and positive social relationships, which are crucial to the way interdisciplinary students learn. Furthermore, it is argued that interdisciplinarity is sometimes applied to research as a label to fit with fundersâ requirements. Specifically, in this case, medical optical imaging is best seen as an interdiscipline as it does not exhibit true interdisciplinary integration.
Further insights show that while interdisciplinarity is promoted in policy around promises and expectations for a better future, it is in tension with how it is organisationally embedded in higher education. These insights form the basis for a list of practical recommendations for institutions. Overall, interdisciplinary doctoral training was observed to present students with difficulties and to leave policy concerns unaddressed
Algorithmic management on digital labour platforms: A systematic literature review
This study aims to understand algorithmic management in digital work platforms. To this end, a systematic literature review was conducted in the main databases of the Administration field. Initially, 912 studies were surveyed that went through inclusion and exclusion criteria, resulting in a corpus of 39 articles. The results produced demonstrated the existing research perspectives, definitions and conceptualizations, their similarities and discrepancies, assisting the development of future research and leading researchers in the area. The contribution of this study consists in making the conceptualization process of algorithmic management more understandable and systematic, guiding towards a uniform direction instead of scattered perspectives.
A Design Science Research Approach to Smart and Collaborative Urban Supply Networks
Urban supply networks are facing increasing demands and challenges and thus constitute a relevant field for research and practical development. Supply chain management holds enormous potential and relevance for society and everyday life as the flow of goods and information are important economic functions. Being a heterogeneous field, the literature base of supply chain management research is difficult to manage and navigate. Disruptive digital technologies and the implementation of cross-network information analysis and sharing drive the need for new organisational and technological approaches. Practical issues are manifold and include mega trends such as digital transformation, urbanisation, and environmental awareness.
A promising approach to solving these problems is the realisation of smart and collaborative supply networks. The growth of artificial intelligence applications in recent years has led to a wide range of applications in a variety of domains. However, the potential of artificial intelligence utilisation in supply chain management has not yet been fully exploited. Similarly, value creation increasingly takes place in networked value creation cycles that have become continuously more collaborative, complex, and dynamic as interactions in business processes involving information technologies have become more intense.
Following a design science research approach this cumulative thesis comprises the development and discussion of four artefacts for the analysis and advancement of smart and collaborative urban supply networks. This thesis aims to highlight the potential of artificial intelligence-based supply networks, to advance data-driven inter-organisational collaboration, and to improve last mile supply network sustainability. Based on thorough machine learning and systematic literature reviews, reference and system dynamics modelling, simulation, and qualitative empirical research, the artefacts provide a valuable contribution to research and practice
Incorporating (variational) free energy models into mechanisms: the case of predictive processing under the free energy principle
The issue of the relationship between predictive processing (PP) and the free energy principle (FEP) remains a subject of debate and controversy within the research community. Many researchers have expressed doubts regarding the actual integration of PP with the FEP, questioning whether the FEP can truly contribute significantly to the mechanistic understanding of PP or even undermine such integration altogether. In this paper, I present an alternative perspective. I argue that, from the viewpoint of the constraint-based mechanisms approach, the FEP imposes an important constraint, namely variational free energy, on the mechanistic architecture proposed by PP. According to the constraint-based mechanisms approach, high-level cognitive mechanisms are integral parts of extensive heterarchical networks that govern the physiology and behavior of agents. Consequently, mechanistic explanations of cognitive phenomena should incorporate constraints and flows of free energy as relevant components, given that the implemented constraints operate as long as free energy is available. Within this framework, I contend that the FEP provides a relevant constraint for explaining at least some biological cognitive mechanisms described in terms of Bayesian generative models that minimize prediction errors
The well-tempered android: philosophical posthumanism in science fiction cinema.
This dissertation examines philosophical posthumanism as a means for critical analysis of the interaction between humans and nonhuman androids in select science fiction cinematic universes. The interaction is analyzed through several facets, notably the interactions between humans and nonhuman androids, particularly as interactions between the human and nonhuman are often sites of violence. Chapter one is an introduction. Chapter two describes the development of philosophical posthumanism from humanism, also including an analysis of philosophical posthumanism, and how it can be used as a critical lens. Chapter three begins an analysis of science fiction cinema by examining the Blade Runner films and HBOâs Westworld series (season one). Chapter four discusses director Ridley Scottâs Alien movies, and the Star Wars films. Chapter five provides an overview of previous discussion, along with introducing some other, more discrete films that have posthumanistic methods/ideas as main plot points. The conclusion also explores ideas about how the science fiction may have implications for real-world technological advances and living in the age of the Anthropocene
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