Exploring Our Automated Work Futures

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Date: 6.11.24

Time: 16:00 – 18:00

Location: University of Stirling campus (Room 2A13 Cottrell building) or Online

Contact/Questions: aiworkfutures@stir.ac.uk

About Our Event

Delegating to AI: What makes sense for workplaces? How do you want to work, learn, and live with AI and data systems? 

Join us to discover how humans and digital systems do – and could – interact in workspaces. Explore the bigger decisions we can attend to now in order to move towards ways of working with these automated systems in the near future that are innovative and ethical. Together, and informed by several years of research, we’ll tackle big questions about trust, transparency, and power in our rapidly changing work worlds. 

Our futures are entangled with data and AI. Work and life decisions are increasingly based on AI-generated outputs or data analytics. But considering these automated futures goes beyond what technologies can do; it invites workers, policymakers, and leaders to reflect on how we want to live, learn, and work with AI and data systems. This two-hour interactive event is a creative space to inform and critically explore issues and opportunities arising from digitally-mediated surveillance practices and systems which assist (or complicate) professional decision-making, strategy, and action across all sectors of human endeavour.

We use ‘speculative futures’: informed thought experiments based on imaginative near-future scenarios to challenge our current thinking, envision possibilities, and signal what we can attend to now. These are not wildly dystopian or utopian portrayals of life with AI but rather provocative scenarios of possibilities.  

Throughout the event we will explore: (1) how humans are positioned in algorithmic loops; (2) emerging ethical, political, economic, cultural, and social justice questions; and (3) how to articulate the work futures we would like.  

We welcome professionals, leaders, work and labour organizations, and policy makers interested in AI-Data systems and/or who work with AI-Data systems that perform some form of monitoring, evaluation, or analytics and/or are curious about the ways in which they are ‘surveilled’ and ‘surveilling’ as workers and citizens. AI expertise is not required!

Event Posts

  • Post-Event Resource Package Available

    The post-event resource package is now available! Click on the Post-Event Resources link on the home page. This package will be of interest to professionals, leaders, work and labour organizations, and policy makers interested in AI-Data systems and/or who work with AI-Data systems that perform some form of monitoring, evaluation, or analytics and/or are curious…

  • Introducing Lisa Burgess & Navigating to the In-Person Room

    First, a warm welcome to Lisa Burgess, Lecturer in Dental, Science Health and Social Care and At New College Lanarkshire in Scotland. Lisa has a background in psychology and worked in the care setting with a focus on care (especially children) for almost a decade proceeding her move to the college. Currently, she is working…

  • Our on-demand computing experts

    We are very pleased that Dr Sandy Brownlee and Dr Leonardo Bezerra, outstanding computer scientists at the University of Stirling will be joining our event as “experts-on-demand” to work with you in our discussions. They will help us sort out fact from fiction and gain insights into what is technologically possible now and in the…

  • Special Guest Facilitators

    We are delighted that Professor Greg Singh (University of Stirling) and Professor Paul Prinsloo (University of South Africa, UNISA) will be joining our Exploring Our Automated Futures event on Wed Nov 6 from 4-6pm. Greg Singh is Professor of Media and Society (Faculty of Arts and Humanities). Paul Prinsloo is Research Professor in Open and…

  • Welcome

    This is where we will make announcements related to our Event. Enjoy exploring the site!