Futures Thinking

FUTURES THINKING NETWORK

About
futures thinking logo

This network was funded from 2018 to 2020.

In literature, in popular media, in scientific research, and in public consciousness, discourse about the future, machine learning, and the human elements of digital technologies proliferates more now than ever before. Thanks to developments in artificial intelligence (AI), we are able to speculate about how our fundamentally social species might interact with performatively human-like machines of our own making. Television shows like Black Mirror and The Handmaid’s Tale, and novels like The Circle or Never Let Me Go speculate about dystopian futures that reflect political realities not unlike those that are currently unfolding in the Global North.

Ethics in AI are much debated in science fiction. However, the scholars in the fields of AI and those in literature, history, and gender studies seldom interact to discuss the realities and probabilities of the future of a technologically advanced mankind. Crucially important to our network is the recognition of how narrative informs and shapes the future. Bringing scholars of historical and literary narratives into conversation with ethicists and developers of digital AI technologies is of paramount importance to futures thinking.

Discussion on AI and global governance is thriving at Oxford, while speculative fiction is an important emerging field in literary studies. This network brought these fields into conversation. We extended from exploring speculative fiction research, questions about the robustness of machine learning, the future trade-offs between privacy and security, to thinking about how we might use historical feminist consciousness-raising methods to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration.  

We were keen for interested parties to join our group so if you worked on or were interested in any aspect of futures thinking, be it in science or the humanities, in any of the University’s divisions, you could  contact us and come along to our events!

We were a network founded on principles of access and inclusion, and strived to host events that consider the lifestyle ethics and carer-responsibilities of our members and attendees, as well as their access needs, pronouns, and other inclusion needs. You could contact us for further information on our manifesto.

We organised regular discussion events, consciousness-raising workshops, and networking opportunities. We were also eager to support conversations across disciplines and welcomed any collaborations!

If you were interested in joining our steering committee, wanted to co-host an event with us, join our mailing list, or offer any suggestions for things you would have liked to see happen in Futures Thinking, you could contact us at futuresthinking@torch.ox.ac.uk.

 

Founder/Main Contact:

Chelsea Haith

Co-Convenors:

Alice Billington

Anne Ploin 

Ilan Price

Dan Holloway

Christopher Burr

Christina de Bellaigue

Robert Iliffe

 

People

Convenors:

Chelsea Haith

Dan Holloway

Ilan Price

Christina de Bellaigue

Robert Iliffe

Anne Ploin

Alice Billington

Christopher Burr

Events
Past Events

Futures Thinking Network

futures thinking logo
 
How Not to Ruin Everything (February 2019) 
To celebrate our inception, Futures Thinking hosted a lunch launch with a panel discussion featuring speakers and academics in the history of science, feminist futures, and internet studies.  
 
Automating Gendered Inequality: The challenge of everyday AI (May 2019) 
Talk with Dr Gina Neff who spoke on the intersections between gender and AI, a topic upon which she has spoken extensively, most recently in fascinating episode of the FutureMakers podcast, entitled ‘Alexa, Does AI have gender?’. 
 
Cyborgs Now: Haraway for 2019 (May 2019) 
Workshop led by Katie Stone, PhD student at Birkbeck, University of London. 
Katie framed 'A Cyborg Manifesto' in its historical context before opening the discussion in collaboration with Chelsea Haith on the topic of contemporary feminisms, locating the cyborg within potentially new, productive parameters of twenty-first century humanitarian concerns. 
 
Writing with Robots (June 2019) 
Kinga Jentetics, CEO of digital publishing platform PublishDrive, is a Forbes 30 under 30 entrepreneur who divides her time between the company and teaching on Google Campus. PublishDrive are revolutionising how authors and publishers market their books through their development of Savant, the in-house artificial intelligence that reads books and then creates the most effective metadata for marketing them.  Kinga in conversation with Dan Holloway, news editor for the Alliance of Independent Authors, talking about where in the publishing world artificial intelligence will take us in the next decade, where it won’t, and where it should and shouldn’t. 
 
Creativity and AI (June 2019) 
RAIL’s first annual conference highlighted some of the latest frontiers in artificial intelligence, addressing the intersections between artificial intelligence and society and bringing together some of the world’s leading experts on how to adapt to, regulate, and harness AI. 
Speakers: 
Anne Ploin, project researcher on the Creative AI project, exploring human/AI collaborations and the automation potential of creative work. 
Dr Paul Duckworth, Principal Researcher in the Machine Learning Research Group at the University of Oxford and collaborates on the Creative AI project. He has recently been collaborating on a number of projects looking at how machine learning might influence the future of work. 
Marie von Heyl, Berlin based multi-media artist working on subject-object relations and the productive inadequacies of language. 
 
Panpsychism and Speculative Evolutionary Aesthetics (June 2019) 
Event: Associate Professor Chris Danta (Associate Professor Chris Danta presented his recent work on 'Panpsychism and Speculative Evolutionary Aesthetics in Samuel Butler’s The Book of the Machines'.
 
Exploring the role of imagination in thinking about the future (June 2019) 
Workshop which explored the theme of the imagination through the lens of science and technology studies (STS) using STS ways of thinking to trace the way imagined ideas become material reality and create possible futures. In the second half, we explored the idea of ‘imaginative bias’ in futures thinking and practice some creative strategies. The workshop was led by Anne Ploin and Dan Holloway.  
 
Futures Thinking Conference Details (October 2019) 
A conference that brought together computer scientists and narrative theorists, philosophers and mathematicians, artists and social scientists, so as to collapse the perceived boundaries in disciplinary interests. 
Papers on topics including: 
  • AI and art 
  • Creativity and technology 
  • Narrativising the digital self 
  • Selves and others online 
  • Histories of AI  
  • Fiction and technology 
  • Copyright and access to ideas 
  • Programming bias 
  • Using AI to shape media 
  • The future of publishing 
  • Science fiction 
  • Urban planning 
  • Mental health and the future 
Keynote Speakers: 
Marcus Du Sautoy OBE FRS is The Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of  Oxford, a mathematician and populariser of mathematics and author of The Creativity Code. 
Molly Flatt is a journalist and author who specialises in the impact of tech on publishing and identity. She is the Associate Editor of FutureBook, and Comment Editor at The Bookseller. 
 
Environmentalism: A Future for Everyone (October 2019) 
Talk by Dr Lucie Middlemiss, Associate Professor in Sustainability at the University of Leeds and Co-Director of the Sustainability Research Institute. 
Dr Middlemiss queried how environmental problems and policy affect people, and how people can in turn affect environmental problems. 
 
Fast and Slow Cycling Futures (November 2019) 
Presentation by Dr Cosmin Popan is a Sociologist at Manchester Metropolitan University that investigated how notions of speed and fast cycling located at the forefront of recent ‘cycle boom’ are entangled with visions of innovative mobilities and urban sustainability. 
 
The noise that keeps me awake at night (November 2019) 
The Futures Thinking Network ran an interactive stall at the Science and Ideas Festival 2019. 
 
Blessed by the Algorithm: AI Teleology and Popular Discourse (January 2020) 
The first Futures Thinking event of Hilary Term 2020 featured Dr Beth Singler, JRF in AI, Homerton College, Cambridge.
The talk explored how over-hyped and aspirational imaginaries of artificial intelligence have traceable effects on both discourse and society, while also becoming entangled with older narratives and tropes from cultural and religious contexts. 
 
Work of Art of History (February 2020) 
The talk examined the depiction of work in a range of contemporary novels set in the near future. It focused in particular on the role that art plays as a utopian model for desirable and worthwhile work, and how this is bound up with the challenge of collectivity in an era of global crises. 
David Sergeant is Associate Professor in Twentieth and Twenty-First Century Literature at the University of Plymouth, and from 2018 to January 2020 was an AHRC ECR Leadership Fellow. 
 
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