Last weekend I was invited as a speaker at the children’s university organized by the Familienakademie of the Kathinka-Platzhoff-Stiftung. The topic was “Wie funktionieren eigentlich Roboter?” [How do robots actually work?] and children between 8 and 12 came to participate. I was quite nervous whether the children would like what I had prepared - but it went really well!
First, I held a 40-minute lecture about robots, thematizing aspects of the robots’ hardware, their software and the ways robots are already used nowadays. One of my main points was that robots are not magical or living beings, but objects that are built out of specific technical components and need to be programmed by people in order to function. Also, I thematized that the way robots are portrayed in fiction is not equivalent with how they are being used nowadays, or how we will live with them in the future. Rather, it is important to understand the basics of robotics for a productive debate on how we want to shape our future with these objects.
After the lecture, the children were split in three groups and completed three different activities for 30 minutes each. As a first activity, I showed them the functioning of a soccer robot that I borrowed from the team I conduct research with. The children had many questions and particularly liked its motion to stand up automatically after falling down. If you are interested in soccer robots, check out the website of the RoboCup, or the youtube channel of the Standard Platform League to see Nao robots play!
The second activity was to design a robot and build a “prototype” out of cardboard. The children first had to decide what their robot should be able to do, and then what components it would need to move, and to perceive and to interact with its environment in order to complete their task. The children got super creative and built very fancy and potentially very useful robots!
And the third activity was to gain first programming experience with the game “Code with Anna and Elsa”. Programming is quite challenging, particularly if you do it for the first time – which is all the more a reason to start when you are young!
I want to thank the Familienakademie for organizing this great event and for the opportunity to present there! And of course I want to thank the kids for coming and participating so enthusiastically!
When reading media articles about artificial intelligence, one easily gets the impression that AI is somewhat independent of humans. The successes of AI are hailed, including its dominance over humans in games like chess or Go, or its power to analyze data faster, cheaper and more accurate than humans. I have the impression that in many articles and discussions about AI, notions of the future are readable between the lines – either dystopian or utopian, and yet of an entity which is on the brink of outpacing humans.
What is often not present in this discussion is the fact that AI does not develop magically all on its own, but like any other software product, is written by people. These people are mostly not addressed in the general discussion about AI. Their work and their perspective on the technology often remains invisible. I argue that this is damaging to a productive discussion on AI because it inhibits us from recognizing ways in which to influence our future with this technology.
If you are interested in this topic, come and join my panel “Addressing the Humans behind AI and Robotics” at the RAI conference “Anthropology, AI and the Future of Human Society” in June 2022. The CfP is still open until February 25, so if you work on this topic, I’d be happy to receive your abstract! Please find more information here.
One of the topics that I have been working on quite intensively in the past months is that of safety in (ethnographic) fieldwork. During and after the fieldwork for my masters’ thesis, I realized that safety is often not given the priority status it deserves. In cultural anthropology, the myth of having to suffer through fieldwork as an initiation rite to the discipline persists stubbornly, even though it is by far no longer in keeping with the times.
As a first step to address this issue, Laura Thurmann, Kira Kreft and I organized a workshop for students of cultural anthropology at Goethe University Frankfurt, which took place on the 26th and 27th of November. We really couldn’t be happier with the result, these months of hard work definitely paid off!
The workshop is based on the assumption that notions of “dangerous places” or “dangerous people” are too generalizing and deepen stereotypes. However, there are dangerous situations which are anchored in their respective context. Reflecting on this context, including on one’s positionality and the vulnerabilities it entails, is a crucial step in preparing for a research stay that is not only insightful, but also prioritizes our physical and mental health.
Laura, Kira and I definitely want to take this project further, so stay tuned!
