What is the political responsibility of ordinary individuals? How can ordinary individuals with very little power pressure morally responsible, powerful agents to address structural injustice? Do we have the same responsibility for historical injustice as we do for that which we see in today’s world? This event aims for nothing less than a fundamental reassessment of the relationship between power, ordinary people, and responsibility for structural injustice.

What we mean by the phrase “artificial intelligence” changes from decade to decade and year to year. The rise of “generative AI” has added language to the definition, and not only because chatbots have been the public face of AI for the last year. This talk will analyze the Transformer Architecture and the language that makes it work, arguing that literary theory – in an updated version – is required to make sense of data culture today.

Defining extremism may be tricky, but one notable feature of many extremist groups – from white supremacists to the alt-right – is the allure of scientific explanations in reinforcing their views. From biological essentialism to “natural” hierarchies, scientific findings are sought out to add substance to extremist arguments. In this event, Tracy Llanera and Louise Richardson-Self will help us explore the boundaries between fact and fiction, science and pseudoscience.

It is widely accepted that political discourse in recent years has become more openly racist and more accepting of wildly implausible conspiracy theories. In this event, Jennifer Saul will explore how such changes have been brought about. She will show how linguistic devices, such as “dogwhistles” and “figleaves”, contribute to the transmission of norm-violating discourse more generally, exploiting and widening existing divisions in society.