Événement
The other timeline: Rehumanizing the normative ideal of workplace augmentation
Lieu : Salle 3.216 - Campus Grand Paris & en ligne
Horaire :12h00–13h30
Intervenants : Nicky Dries – KU Leuven
Abstract :
Augmentation—machines and humans working together to enhance one another, by design, such that the intelligence of the resulting system improves—is currently considered the normative ideal for the future of work. However, augmentation is currently narrowly understood, from a managerialist, almost neo-Taylorist perspective. Raisch and Krakowski (2021), discussing the ‘automation-augmentation paradox’, identified an urgency for social scientists to get more involved in debates around the future of work, dominated by computer scientists and engineers who “often regard humans as a mere disturbance in the system that can and should be designed out” (p. 203). The focus mostly lies on technology, adopting a techno-determinist stance assuming that technological capabilities and innovations shape social, economic, and political reality, rather than the other way around, while topics like future labor conditions and relations are rarely addressed. Some argue that Big Tech is on a mission to monopolize the collective imagination around the future, using discursive closure tactics like naturalization—i.e., presenting trends as inevitable, while obfuscating the sociohistorical processes that created them. Using multimodal discourse analysis, we explore the artistic processes and practices of 35 professional artists who are working, full-time, with augmentative AI technologies (embodied and non-embodied, robotic, virtual, and embedded). These artists, many of whom world-renowned (e.g., Refik Anadol; AndyRobot; Leonel Moura; Alexander Whitley), span various artistic neo-disciplines such as data painter, choreoboticist, movement analyst, and computational photographer. The central idea of our paper is that in the 1960s and 70s, there were two traditions in robotics: the engineering tradition, focused on efficiency and automation, and the artistic tradition, focused on relationality and human-centricity. Over time, the engineering timeline seems to have won out, and this is the timeline we find ourselves in today. Hence, this study asks the question: what if we would have gone down the other timeline?
Bio :
Nicky Dries is Full Professor of Organizational Behavior at KU Leuven (department of Work & Organisation Studies) and at BI Norwegian Business School in Oslo (department of Leadership & Organizational Behaviour). In Leuven, she runs the Future of Work Lab within the Faculty of Economics, that studies social imaginaries for the future. The Lab’s research builds on methods aimed at triggering people's imagination about the future, using media analysis, robotic art and design, virtual reality, and science-fiction movies. The mission of the Lab is to re-politicize the future of work, and stimulate democratic debate.
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