Papers by Ceyda Yolgörmez
Oxford University Press eBooks, May 22, 2024
AI & SOCIETY
As robots increasingly become part of our everyday lives, questions arise with regards to how to ... more As robots increasingly become part of our everyday lives, questions arise with regards to how to approach them and how to understand them in social contexts. The Western history of human–robot relations revolves around competition and control, which restricts our ability to relate to machines in other ways. In this study, we take a relational approach to explore different manners of socializing with robots, especially those that exceed an instrumental approach. The nonhuman subjects of this study are built to explore non-purposeful behavior, in an attempt to break away from the assumptions of utility that underlie the hegemonic human–machine interactions. This breakaway is accompanied by ‘learning to be attuned’ on the side of the human subjects, which is facilitated by continuous relations at the level of everyday life. Our paper highlights this ground for the emergence of meanings and questions that could not be subsumed by frameworks of control and domination. The research-creati...
The Cultural Life of Machine Learning
What is it that we call "social?" What is a society, and what are the implicati... more What is it that we call "social?" What is a society, and what are the implications of our conceptions of what societies consist of? How do studies of the "social" organize this understanding and construct the limits of our sociological imagination? Dealing with the social aspects of the technological, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), is becoming increasingly urgent. For example, MIT Media Lab researchers recently proposed to construct a completely new field called machine behavior (Rahwan et al., 2019); their aim is to conceive of a field between the AI sciences and the social sciences in which the machine's behaviors and the social world around them mutually influence one another. The growing hype around AI (perhaps just before its third winter, as some would have it) has created much conversation about how these technologies are becoming part of everyday lives and legitimated existing academic debates over the social impact of these phenomena. Initiatives such as Data & Society and AI Now have been working on the social and political consequences of algorithmic cultures for the better part of the past decade.
ISEA2020: Why Sentience? Proceedings, 2020
This paper asks how AI can change the consensus around the notion of sentience, through a specifi... more This paper asks how AI can change the consensus around the notion of sentience, through a specific focus on the intertwining of culture and materiality, as well as human-nonhuman relations. The question of sentience in machines is generally regarded as a rather fetishizing notion that obscures the specific assemblages of AI. We would like to open up this notion of fetish, and provide a theoretical map for an inverted way of understanding how fetishization of AI could be mobilized in cultivating an interspecies community. [1] The ideas reflected in this paper are drawn from a research-creation project that took place in Spring of 2019, Machine Ménagerie , in which a collection of small autonomous robots serve as a medium for considering different understandings of human-machine interaction. Machine Ménagerie creates the basis for interrogating the exclusive definition of sentience as a measurable property. We argue instead for an approach that would emphasize (1) the relational nature of the notion of sentience, and (2) the rituals of care and friendship in relating to nonhuman others. In this context, sentience is not something that beings own, or that humans bestow upon things, but rather is something that is continuously achieved and in which humans and nonhumans participate.
AI and Society, 2021
As robots increasingly become part of our everyday lives, questions arise with regards to how to ... more As robots increasingly become part of our everyday lives, questions arise with regards to how to approach them and how to understand them in social contexts. The Western history of human-robot relations revolves around competition and control, which restricts our ability to relate to machines in other ways. In this study, we take a relational approach to explore different manners of socializing with robots, especially those that exceed an instrumental approach. The nonhuman subjects of this study are built to explore non-purposeful behavior, in an attempt to break away from the assumptions of utility that underlie the hegemonic human-machine interactions. This breakaway is accompanied by 'learning to be attuned' on the side of the human subjects, which is facilitated by continuous relations at the level of everyday life. Our paper highlights this ground for the emergence of meanings and questions that could not be subsumed by frameworks of control and domination. The research-creation project Machine Ménagerie serves as a case study for these ideas, demonstrating a relational approach in which the designer and the machines co-constitute each other through sustained interactions, becoming attuned to one another through the performance of research. Machine Ménagerie attempts to produce affective and playful-if not unruly-nonhuman entities that invite interaction yet have no intention of serving human social or physical needs. We diverge from other social robotics research by creating machines that do not attempt to mimic human social behaviours. Keywords Human-machine interaction • Relational social robotics • Learning to be attuned • Non-purposeful robots • Robots in the wild * Ceyda Yolgormez
The Cultural Life of Machine Learning: An Incursion into Critical AI Studies, 2020
What is it that we call "social?" What is a society, and what are the implications of our concept... more What is it that we call "social?" What is a society, and what are the implications of our conceptions of what societies consist of? How do studies of the "social" organize this understanding and construct the limits of our sociological imagination? Dealing with the social aspects of the technological, especially in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), is becoming increasingly urgent. For example, MIT Media Lab researchers recently proposed to construct a completely new field called machine behavior (Rahwan et al., 2019); their aim is to conceive of a field between the AI sciences and the social sciences in which the machine's behaviors and the social world around them mutually influence one another. The growing hype around AI (perhaps just before its third winter, as some would have it) has created much conversation about how these technologies are becoming part of everyday lives and legitimated existing academic debates over the social impact of these phenomena. Initiatives such as Data & Society and AI Now have been working on the social and political consequences of algorithmic cultures for the better part of the past decade.
Thesis Chapters by Ceyda Yolgörmez
The dissertation proposes the outlines of a sociology of machines for understanding human-machine... more The dissertation proposes the outlines of a sociology of machines for understanding human-machine relations, especially those that exceed the dominant normative frameworks. Bringing together social theory, artificial intelligence research, and human-machine interaction literature, the dissertation argues for the need to devote attention to alternative realities with technologies from a sociological perspective. This move serves as a critique of the dominant manner in which technologies are thought with, which is as means to the demands of an instrumental rationality. In the face of threats to other forms of life and relationality, the thesis insists on doing things otherwise, including sociological conduct itself. The thesis proposes using creative methodologies such as research-creation as a way to reinvigorate sociology to develop its capacity to address the multiplicity of human machine relations.
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Papers by Ceyda Yolgörmez
Thesis Chapters by Ceyda Yolgörmez