Decentering automated-decision making: technology and social change from the majority world

Keynote presentation by Professor Heather Horst, Director, Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University.

This talk will focus on the growth of automated decision-making systems and their impact on everyday life. Using case studies from the majority world, a 'decentering' framework will be introduced to understand technologies like AI and ADM. The discussion will explore the creation, implementation, thwarting, and alteration of technical systems in non-Western regions, highlighting the social impact of these technologies. By examining innovation, investment, discourse, and practice, the talk will demonstrate the consequences of ADM and suggest ways to develop more nuanced understandings of these emergent technologies. It will also discuss alternative futures for these technologies based on different practices and possibilities.

Speaker

Heather Horst is Director, Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Her research examines digital media and technology including the use of digital media in transnational families, transformations in mobile telecommunications infrastructures in the Caribbean and Pacific, and materiality through studying homes, clothing, and technology. Her publications include The Cell Phone: An Anthropology of Communication; Hanging Around, Messing Around and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media; Digital Anthropology; Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices; The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Island Perspectives; and Digital Media Practices in Households. Her creative outcomes include two documentaries on smartphone use in Fiji and Papua New Guinea and a film on the Fijian fashion industry.

Order of proceedings: one hour keynote address, followed by a networking reception.

The DSC Doctoral Research Conference brings together the College's three existing symposia – Practice Research Symposium (PRS), Urban Futures Symposium and Social Change Symposium – to create a shared space for innovation, sustainability and resilience aligned with the theme of regenerative futures.