Professor of Media and Communication Studies, Uppsala University

This keynote lecture is part of the workshop Human Simulations/Simulating Humanity: Exploring New Approaches to Computer Simulations in an Age of AI, hosted by SCAS and funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

ABSTRACT:
This lecture sets out from the fact that, existentially speaking, a human being is always more than what can be known, quantified, pinned down or simulated. The fact that humans – creatures of the limit situation – are irreducible to statistical averages, prompts putting our AI-driven lifeworld to an existential test, by asking: What existential needs can and cannot be met by simulation? And how do digital simulations stand in relation to the non-representability of liminality and existence? To discuss these questions, I will be delving into the contemporary surge of simulating humans in generative AI systems, through three examples. First, “This person does not exist” (a generative adversarial network called StyleGAN2) is a machine learning framework producing synthetic images of persons of extraordinary fidelity, offering an eerie and deep relationality with technology. The second case is chatbots invoking pan-relationality or what I call relational expectancy in users. Finally, I will discuss the case of biometrics that nails body data to “truths” about a person – cutting open an existential chasm between the existential and dis/abled body and the biometric body. Without spoiling how the models fared, I can reveal that the aim is finally to try to offer a discussion that reconceives of them as existential AI and sets existentially sound limits on simulation, at a point in time when reality seems to be bending itself to a flurry of deep fake distortions, in a vast and violent manner.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER:
Amanda Lagerkvist is Professor of Media and Communication Studies, PI of the Uppsala Hub for Digital Existence and guest researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research on Religion and Society at Uppsala University. As a Wallenberg Academy Fellow (2014-2018), she founded the field of existential media studies. Her work has spanned the existential dimensions of digital memories, death online and lifeworlds of biometrics. She currently explores intersections of biometric data, disability and selfhood; and the ambivalent AI imaginary and its relationship to both futures and endings. In her monograph, Existential Media: A Media Theory of the Limit Situation (OUP, 2022) she introduces Karl Jaspers’ existential philosophy of limit situations for media theory. Her new book Dismedia: Technologies of the Extraordinary Self is under contract with University of Michigan Press.

The lecture will be followed by a reception (17:00 - 18:00).