Principle investigators : Shane Denson and Armen Khatchatourov
Joint program by Stanford and DICEN/Gustave Eiffel University
December 4-5, 2025 at Stanford
Speakers
M. Allahyari (Stanford)
H. Bajohr (UC Berkeley)
D. Bates (UC Berkeley)
B. Benbouzid (UGE)
J.-P. Dupuy (Stanford)
N. Fitzpatrick (TU Dublin)
J. Fredrikzon (KTH, Stockholm)
J. Irwin (Stanford)
A. Martin Mussgnug (Stanford)
H. Nissenbaum (Cornell Tech)
W. Sack (UC Santa Cruz)
A. Somaini (University Sorbonne Nouvelle – Paris 3)
F. Turner (Stanford)
The prospect of intelligent machines challenges our societal norms. Matters of debate over the past half century concerning digital networks – e.g. access, privacy, subjectivity, participation – must be reconsidered in the age of machine learning. More specifically, the proliferation of AI-based systems leads to new ways of understanding what normativity is. Social norms don’t change overnight; however, the mechanisms and processes that drive these changes are increasingly influenced by AI-based infrastructures, characterized by a heightened level of automation, while being opaque, inscrutable, and anthropomorphic.
Faced with such conditions, we have to ask, first, what it means to instill or break a norm and, second, what norms even mean or represent. This landscape presents both profound challenges to maintain just and stable means of interaction and, at the same time, novel and creative opportunities for alternative modes of being.
The two conferences (December 4-5, 2025 at Stanford, April or May in Paris) aim to investigate how norms of embodiment, forms of knowledge, and techniques of governmentality operate in the age of AI, and to address the imbrication of two movements: how the evolution of social norms is reflected in new algorithmic practices, and how these algorithms influence social norms in various domains. It will bring together the humanities, social sciences, and law to address issues of crucial contemporary importance.
