AI Media Lab" concept

The media transformation of our societies is taking place at breathtaking speed. Within short periods of time, new, highly capitalised platforms and media technologies present themselves to us, the effects of which on people, society and culture are always neglected. With the more recent AI applications, a technology has been added whose effects on large parts of social configurations and subject constitutions are having a lasting impact.

The tools for analysing, criticising and practising AI and other new media technologies are not automatically available, but must be negotiated and developed. We believe that there is a lot at stake and that it is the urgent task of a university media institute to accompany these processes in a reflective and critical manner.

Since AI technologies, as cross-sectional technologies, affect heterogeneous aspects of our coexistence, we can hardly expand the scope of this sufficiently. Be it aspects of data protection and surveillance, personal rights, copyright, the problem of deep fakes, a democracy that is not at all prepared for this, the degradation of many intellectual and creative fields of work as a result of their AI integration, the change in teaching and research, as well as the scandalous consumption of resources and increase in emissions due to an intensive global expansion of data centres specialising in AI: these are just highlights of the social reconfigurations that are emerging as a result of massive capital investment in the field of AI.

The "AI Media Lab" at the Department of Media, Society and Communication at the University of Innsbruck aims to develop elements of a debate on the consequences of an AI infrastructure as it is currently being established. Formats and activities that we consider for this purpose are in particular workshops with experts, practical, reflective experiments with AI tools and other technologies, networking with corresponding labs at other university and non-university locations, as well as publications on the topic.

Contact person: Dr Oliver Leistert