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Stephanie Dinkins at work. Photo via Nvidia AI Art Gallery.

The keynote at the 2022 Virginia Humanities Conference will be given by Stephanie Dinkins, “On Love, Data and Technologies Rooted in Care.” We hope you  can attend!

Many algorithmic technologies are rooted in methods that limit and cajole information from the first human and computational assumptions. We assess ourselves using false dichotomies that force inadequate choices building a world bereft of complexity and nuance. The disinclinations of our systems to cope with the unseen, the unknown, difference, and change limit possibilities for everyone.

Through intelligent technologies –the ones that look like us, the ones that serve us, and the ones that do neither — we have the ability to understand and organize human activity with complexity and broadly principled care.  So, why aren’t these the goals of our algorithmic doppelgangers, assistants, and technological ecosystems more generally?

Often envisioned outside the realm of what is technologically possible within artificial intelligence, care is an essential aspect of human information and resource-sharing networks that aid our survival.  Recognition of this idea raises questions such as how can we infuse — cooperatively, adversarially, or fugitively—ecosystems we depend on as well as the people and institutions that currently hold power with ways of being, values, ethics, and knowledges they are blind to or don’t understand?