The first speaker of our 2026 Critical AI seminar series is Rebekah Cupitt. Rebekah has a BA (University of Queensland) and an MA in Social Anthropology (Stockholm University) and holds a PhD in Human-Computer Interaction specialising in Mediated Communication and is currently a lecturer at Birkbeck. Rebekah's research takes a post-human and anti-normative approach to techno-utopias which often haunt human-computer interactions and therefore have implications for design.
In her talk, "Piercing the veil of authority in techno-utopian and AGI future-driven innovation" Rebekah will highlight how concepts like "People-centred AI" simulate responsibility without providing substantive challenges to the industry. She will further explain how the exclusion of social sciences is a deliberate choice by technologists which continues existing efforts to limit the dialogue over the role of technolgoy in society. Click below for a full abstract.
The second speaker of our 2026 Critical AI seminar series is Kate Devlin. Kate is Professor of AI & Society in the Department of Digital Humanities at King's College London and Chair-Director of the Digital Futures Institute. Trained in archaeology at and computer science at Queen's University Belfast and the University of Bristol, her research explores how and why people interact with technologies.
About the talk: Generative AI use promised transformative productivity but, for some users, they offer emotional support. People are forming attachments to AI systems and are confiding in them, relying on them, using them therapeutically, and even falling in love with them. What are the repercussions of this? And who is responsible if things go wrong? This talk examines that phenomenon, exploring how AI is reshaping how we relate to the machines and, by extension, to each other.
The third speaker of our 2026 Critical AI seminar series is Isabel Millar. Isabel is a London-based philosopher and psychoanalytic theorist, author of The Psychoanalysis of Artificial Intelligence and the forthcoming Patipolitics. She earned a PhD in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis from Kingston University, holds an MA from Birkbeck, University of London, and a BA from University of Sussex. Millar is an Associate Researcher at Newcastle University, teaches at the Global Centre for Advanced Studies, and co-founded the Institute of Symbolic Exchange. .
About the talk: AI Singulatarian discourse promises a new dawn of intelligence. A state of superior knowledge where all problems are solvable and all desires can be satisfied. This focus on novelty gives the illusion of newness but in reality, seeks to endlessly reincorporate anomalies into an algorithm. What Adorno might have characterised as ‘pseudo-activity’. The recent TV drama Pluribus dramatizes the arrival of this state of universal consciousness and demonstrates why it is only through the particular that the universal exists. Arendt spoke of natality as an endless potential for the birth of something singular and unprecedented, a source of optimism but more conceptually an ontological dimension of human existence. The type of intelligence that we are told can replace us, lacks precisely the intractable singularity of subjectivity.As part of the Birkbeck Science week, Dr. Reidl will hold the annual Booth Memorial Lecture, honoring the contributions of Andrew and Kathleen Booth to the field of computer science.
In this talk, Dr. Reidl will revisit the modest beginnings of computing to explore how the interaction between humans and machines has evolved and what it means for how we learn, work, and think.
In the fourth talk of the Critical AI 2024 seminar series, Dr. Reidl proposes that the future promised to us by AI technology will, inevitably, suck. He asks:
- What is life like in 'the' AI future?
- What are the unique issues with AI that will haunt us?
- Do we have a choice?
In the third talk of the Critical AI 2024 seminar series, Dr. Kozminska examines the current state of AI-powered speech recognition and language processing technologies. She asks:
- How do these technologies actually work?
- Who benefits most from these tools, and who might be left behind?
- Why does some people's speech get recognized more accurately than others?
In the second talk of the Critical AI 2024 seminar series, Dr. McKim considers recent advances in text to moving image generators, such as Open AI’s Sora, and questions the nature of the worlds they are generating. He asks:
- How exactly do these models work?
- What ability do they have to simulate complex physical processes?
- Should we be sceptical of the AI industry’s claims that they are developing world simulators?
- Is behaving like a thinker enough to be a thinker?
- Aren’t large language models ‘just next word predictors’?
- Can a large language model learn about the world just by studying language?
We begin our BIDA seminar series on "Critical Voices on AI" with Dan McQuillan, Lecturer in Creative & Social Computing at Goldmiths and author of the recently published book "Resisting AI". In his work, Dan systematically explores how the essentialising nature of AI systems fuels social divisions and, in its most extreme forms, the fascist politics of our times. He calls for us to resist AI in its current form and proposes new approaches to this technology grounded in mutual care.
We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held in room B01 of the Clore Management Center.
We continue our BIDA seminar series on "Critical Voices on AI" with Asmelash Teka Hagdu, fellow of the Distributed AI Research Institute and co-founder/CTO of Lesan.
We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held online.
In our third installment of our seminar series, we are joined by Sayash Kapoor, Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. Sayash will talk about his most recent work that challenges the presumed accuracy of AI/ML systems in social settings:
“We are constantly surrounded by exciting headlines and bold claims about artificial intelligence (AI), making it difficult to critically assess the truth behind these statements. In this talk, we'll look at the reasons behind AI hype and explore practical ways to resist it. We will start with common pitfalls in journalism that lead to public confusion. Then, we’ll look at how non-reproducible research exaggerates AI claims. Finally, we will explore the strategies used by profit-driven companies to overstate AI technologies, ultimately shaping public perception.”
We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held online.