Artificial Intelligence

The final speaker in this session at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen is Thomas Steinmaurer, addressing the dynamics of AI technocultures. He begins by highlighting the critical role of communication in engagements with AI: communicative AI has increasingly inserted itself into human-machine relationships, and AI appears now predominantly also in the form of artificial communication.

This has resulted in new information search routines and an erosion of information competences; it leads to a hidden anthropomorphisation of technology, and produces uncertainties in epistemic verification practices. Commercialisation is a key dynamic of such developments, led by dominant platform providers, and …

The final speakers in this session at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen are Annekatrin Bock and Dan Verständig, whose focus is on programmed futures in education. We use complex technological systems everyday, but must be aware of when they are dysfunctional; as routines break and crises happen, this is when education happens. The promise of education is to address and enable us to navigate uncertainty, but what education provides also serves to negate certain possibilities.

Uncertainty is the starting-point for pedagogical action: it requires such action. But it is also an outcome of such action: education opens up …

The second day at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen starts with a keynote by Nick Couldry, focussing on the corporatisation of media and everything. He notes a number of key changes over the past twenty years: datafication – the transformation of everyday life into data, and its exploitation by business and government, thereby producing the social for capital; social media – shifting the exploitation of social data to produce attention and shape consumer and citizen action; and artificial intelligence – the corporate capture of the human mind itself, which automates cognitive production and transforms what we value.

This …

The final speaker in this session at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen is Giovanna Mascheroni, whose focus is on discussions with communicative AI systems about controversial and polarising political issues. This was explored by the use of serious games, with ChatGPT performing the role of a political journalist arguing first against and then for the radical Last Generation climate protest group. The switch from one position to the other was made once ChatGPT’s arguments for started to repeat themselves. Students then did the same, and also interacted with ChatGPT as they did so, and a jury judged who …

The final speaker in this session at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen is Hossein Derakhshan, whose focus is on AI and algorithm studies. He begins by noting an ontological crisis in media studies: the field has looked at the production of, audiences for, and texts of media, but the rise of algorithmic platforms in particular has meant that the media texts, in particular, have now been destabilised – users of media no longer necessarily encounter the same texts in the same forms, formats, and combinations.

Instagram posts and stories, TikTok feeds, Spotify playlists, Meta ads, AI chats are …

For the first paper session at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen I am in a session on disinformation and conspiracies, which starts with Marilia Gehrke and Eedan Amit-Danhi, whose focus is on gendered disinformation. Gendered disinformation includes manipulated images, using image editing and increasingly also generative AI; this often references sexuality and personal identity.

Much of the scholarship to date has tended to focus on gender or disinformation, but not on both together; it also tends to focus on intentionality, even though the harm that gendered disinformation produces does not depend on whether this content was shared with …

After the great excitement of AoIR 2025 in Rio de Janeiro, I’m now at my final stop on this conference trip, at the ZeMKI 20th anniversary conference in Bremen which promises to be an equally stimulating event. The theme here is “20 years into the future”, and we start with a keynote by the great José van Dijck. Her focus is on digital sovereignty in Europe under the current and emerging global circumstances.

This responds to the platformisation of public communication in society; public participation via platforms is possible only after signing up to one or more (US-headquartered) platforms, for …

The final speaker in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is my QUT colleague Dan Angus, presenting our work on AI chatbots’ responses to conspiracist ideation. Ai chatbots are now widely used by everyday users; this is leading to a range of problematic outcomes, as people are being drawn into deep emotional relationships with such chatbots, for instance. Chatbots are also increasingly manipulated to represent distinct ideological perspectives.

Here are our slides:

What happens, then, when chatbots are asked specifically about conspiracy theories? What guardrails and safety mechanisms, if any, are in place in leading …

The third presenter in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is Shupei Yuan, whose interest is in the way that AI chatbots influence risk perception and decision making during times of crisis. In some such crises, such as natural disasters, people might find out about the current situation via emergency alerts, but are perhaps unsure about the correct course of action to take. This requires a short-term decision-making process that deals with the immediate threat.

AI chatbots may be used in such contexts; the Red Cross had an AI chatbot called Clara during the COVID-19 pandemic, for instance, but …

The next speaker in this session at the AoIR 2025 conference is Muira McCammon, whose focus is on AI chatbots, and particularly a chatbot called Stella, and its use in higher education. Unusually, this is a rule-based chatbot rather than a completely generative AI system. This and other chatbots are now also increasingly used by undergraduate students in higher education, and even embedded in university Websites; the implications of this still need to be understood.

Stella was brought onto campus at Tulane University in October 2023, unbeknownst to teaching staff themselves, and asks students two simple questions: how are you …