With this project, I think through systems of advanced automation, such as artificial intelligence (AI) as a sociotechnological modality that performs and produces an “imitation of life.” In the midst of a technological paradigm shift, one sees the first wave of popular adoption and vertiginous controversies around AI at a societal scale. The work a critical Digital Humanities is to separate signal from noise around the emergent state of machine learning across visual, language, and multi-model models. Toward this end, I work through several AI topoi, looking to make visible the situated context of their design and deployment. A key focus of this project is to address the seemingly ubiquitous framing of AI technological determinism to address with a more balanced view and critical eye AI in/as society.

Dr. Beth Coleman is Associate Professor of Data & Cities at the Institute of Communication, Culture, Information and Technology and Faculty of Information, University of Toronto, where she directs the City as Platform lab. Working in the disciplines of Science and Technology Studies, generative aesthetics, and Black poesis, her research focuses on smart technology & machine learning, urban data, and civic engagement. She is the author of Hello Avatar and multiple articles, including “Race as Technology.” She was a 2021 Google Artists and Machines Intelligence awardee and is a continuing Senior visiting researcher with Google Brain and Responsible AI. She is a research lead and founding member of the Trusted Data Sharing group, Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. Her research affiliations have included the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University; Microsoft Research New England; Data & Society Institute, New York; and expert consultant for the European Commission Digital Futures. She is currently working on the exhibition "Speculative AI: Octavia Butler and Other Possible Worlds,” and the monograph, Imitation of Life: Generative AI in/as Society.