Thursday Night Live! Bot Club (humans welcome): Decolonising Bots

Artwork: Joshua May

Decolonising Bots looks into the ways that algorithmic agents perform notions of human race. With researcher Ramon Amaro and designer and writer Florence Okoye.

As in many societal domains, algorithmic culture’s implicit standard for what it considers default, normal, or average is positioned in relation to the Caucasian male. Examples abound: FaceApp’s Hot filter turns black faces into white ones, Amazon Prime’s automated delivery avoids black neighbourhoods in American cities and Facial recognition algorithms have a harder time identifying non-white faces than white faces. If it is not possible to decolonise algorithmic culture separately from the larger society, could we nevertheless conceive of bots or algorithmic agents that actively contribute to the process of decolonisation? And how might they interact with an Afrofuturist perspective on algorithmic culture?

This Thursday Night Live programme is followed by a hackathon on Friday, 27 October, for a maximum of 20 participants.

Ramon Amaro

Ramon Amaro is Associate Lecturer in Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Visual Cultures, and a PhD researcher at the Centre for Cultural Studies, Goldsmiths, University of London. His research interests include machine learning, black studies, race, social modelling and the philosophy of maths. He holds an advanced degree in Sociological Research and a BSE in Mechanical Engineering. He is former Assistant Editor of the open-access journal Big Data & Society and founder and lead researcher at the machine learning and artificial intelligence research collective, SambaRhino.com. Ramon Amaro is a 2017 Research Fellow of Het Nieuwe Instituut.

Florence Okoye

Florence Okoye works as a UX Designer, writes science fiction, messes around with Arduinos and web technologies whilst studying dead languages and computer science. She likes to think about intersectional futurism, technology, social justice and being a black Igbo diasporan in the UK. She is interested in projects that encourage public engagement with technology and the arts, especially those that explore the intersection of minority experiences. She is the Events and Marketing Manager for the MancsterCon sequential art convention, and is one of the leading voices of Afrofutures_uk.

Bot Club (humans welcome)

Bot Club casts a critical look at a world where bots, algorithmic agents and generative processes do the work and gives them the stage

Thursday Bite

Before the Thursday Night you can grab a bite to eat with the speakers and staff of Het Nieuwe Instituut. At 18:30 Het Nieuwe Café will serve soup with bread or a quiche with salad. Dinner vouchers are available for € 7,50 up to a day before the particular Thursday Night event via the Tickets link or at the bar this evening.