IST Research Talk: “Manifesting AI: Mystical Mentalities in Human-Machine Interactions” - Kelley Cotter
Date & Time: November 16, 2023 from 12:00 PM - 01:15 PM
Location: E202 Westgate Building
Watch this talk below.
Join Assistant Professor Kelley Cotter for “Manifesting AI: Mystical Mentalities in Human-Machine Interactions" as part of the IST Research Talks series.
Abstract
What people know about data-centric technologies shapes human-machine interactions with regard to trust, reliance, agency, and control. While a conventional interpretation of "knowledge" focuses on understanding how a system operates, Cotter positions this as one of many ways of seeing and knowing data-centric technologies. From this starting point, her talk explores alternate epistemologies applied in constructing meaning around data-centric technologies. She will present cases exemplifying mystical mentalities around these technologies that reflect faith and fantasy in their entanglements with everyday practices and concerns. With this empirical work, she considers what extraordinary visions of data-centric technologies mean for "ordinary" people's acceptance of them, "warts and all." She will further demonstrate the complexity of beliefs about these technologies, which she shows can be simultaneously logical and magical.