Concept Note

Digital life is augmenting human capacities and disrupting age-old human activities. Code-driven systems have become ubiquitous in our quotidian life. A new age of connectivity, offering previously unimagined opportunities and unprecedented threats. As emerging algorithm-driven artificial intelligence (AI) continues to spread, will people be better off than they are today? The idea of the self and its nature has long been a matter of debate in Philosophy. Since Aristotle, debates on whether the self is a 'given' or a 'construction' have animated our conversations. While the social construction of the self has largely been accepted by contemporary scholarship, this new era of artificial intelligence is enforcing the reconfiguration of a 'self' that is digitally mediated (Wood, 2016).

It has been claimed that artificial intelligence will enhance human effectiveness, save time and money, and eventually offer a more-customized future. This seems to be the idea behind smart devices. However, in order to be effective and self-evolving it has to continuously fetch a large amount of personal and non-personal data that raises the concern of controlling and monitoring of the totality of human life (Couldry and Mejias, 2019). The way our own perception of ourselves is (re) defined by smart technologies raises concerns of our perceptions of freedom and surveillance sans consent. Are we then approaching a new era where AI will know us better than we know ourselves? What kind of a social order will this give rise to and who would be the more privileged?

Regardless of the utilitarian ends of AI, the burgeoning concerns reside in how advances in AI will affect what it means to be human, to be productive and to exercise free will. To what extent can AI pervade our lives? And to what extent people will concede their independence, privacy, and power over choice and paradoxically, allow a situation where their agency could be manipulated and ultimately subverted to the new matrix? These concerns will deepen as automated systems become more prevalent and complex.

This conference will focus on locating the notions of self, freedom and choice in the wider structural reconfigurations that is being propelled by advances in Artificial Intelligence. It will engage with diverse issues and concerns including but not limited to the following:

• Ontological debates in Structure, Agency, Processes in Artificial Intelligence
• Problematising Free Will and Choice in the face of AI
• Data Governance, Surveillance State, Policies and Practices
• AI, Infodemics and the Age of Post-Truth
• AI, social media, and Violence
• AI and Health
• Gender, AI, and Inequalities
• Artificial Intelligence and Digital Capitalism
• Ecology, AI and Environmental Politics
• Data Colonialism and Resistance

Important Dates

Abstract submission deadline       20th January 2022

Confirmation of acceptance of abstract       25th January 2022

Submission of Full Paper       31st March 2022

Conference Date:       15th-16th June 2022

Venue

The conference will be conducted in a blended/hybrid mode. The offline mode shall be conducted at Galgotias University, Greater Noida (UP), India. However, the decision to conduct the conference in offline mode may vary as per the COVID 19 protocol.

For those interested, please note

Please send your abstract (250-300 words), and brief bio of the author (up to 100 words) by 20th January 2021 and full paper (5000-7000 words) by 31st March 2022 to the following email: guinternationalconference2022@gmail.com

For registration, click on the link below or scan the barcode.

For any further queries please contact:
Contact number: 7217797422 9599913245

Additional Information

The title of the proposed paper must not be longer than 90 characters (including spaces). The length of the final proposed chapter should not be more than 5000-7000 words (including abstract, references in addition to tables and graphs, if necessary). Please use Harvard citations format for referencing.

Organisers

Division of Sociology and Division of Political Science
School of Liberal Education
Galgotias University, Greater Noida (UP), India

Only Selected participants will be considered for presenting their papers in the conference.
The Selected papers may be considered for publishing in SCOPUS/Web of Science indexed journal.

Only ed papers for presentation will be required to pay the registration amount.

List of Our Panelists

Prof. (Dr.) Bula Bhadra

Short Bio: She is currently working as the Head of the department of Sociology, Sister Nivedita University, Kolkata. She had been teaching at the master&rsquos and M. Phil levels, Convener of M. Phil, and PhD program of Sociology at University of Calcutta, supervising PhD and MPhil theses on gender related issues, childhood and issues pertaining to crime and deviance etc. Her latest engagement has been to understand how technology-Society Interface and its Challenges and Prospects.

Prof. (Dr) G. Nagaraju

Short Bio: Prof. Nagaraju Gundemeda is currently working as Assistant Professor, in University of Hyderabad (2004) India. He holds a Ph.D. from University of Hyderabad. His area of teaching and research interest covers Information Technology and Society, Sociology of Education, Sociology of Youth, Sociology of Marginal Groups and Sociology

Dr. Parvathi K. Iyer

Short Bio: Dr. Parvathi K. Iyer joined the Centre for Studies in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy, Central University of Gujarat, as Assistant Professor in August 2010 and has been working there since long. She earned her doctoral and MPhil degree from the Department of Sociology, University of Hyderabad. She has previously worked as Fellow (QHS) at NISTADS, a science policy institute of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (CSIR) and has also held research positions at IIT, Delhi and University of Hyderabad during her pre-doctoral years. Her area of specialization is Sociology of Science and Technology. Her research interests devolve around the areas of public engagement with S&T, gender and science in India, Sectoral S&T Policy, governance and regulatory issues in S&T. Her research publications have centered on these areas, besides the health sector in India. She teaches M.Phil. courses on Introduction to Science, Technology and Society Studies, Sectoral Science & Technology Policy, History of S&T in Modern India and Research Methodology

Dr. Preeti Raghunath

Short Bio: Dr. Preeti Raghunath is a Lecturer (Communication and Media Studies) at the School of Arts and Social Sciences, Monash University, Malaysia. She is the author of &lsquoCommunity Radio Policies in South Asia: A Deliberative Policy Ecology Approach&rsquo, published by Palgrave Macmillan, in 2020. Her work has focused on the interlinkages between media technologies and associated policies and their making, historically and in present times, placing people at the centre. She currently serves as a Vice-Chair of the Global Media Policy Working Group of the International Association for Media and Communication Research (IAMCR). Before joining academia, she worked in India's media and communication industry.

Dr. Diksha Shukla

Short Bio: Diksha Shukla is Assistant Professor, Computer Science in the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences, University of Wyoming, USA. She received Ph.D. degree in Computer & Information Science and Engineering from Syracuse University, USA, in 2019, M.S. degree in Mathematics from Louisiana Tech University, USA, in 2014 and the M.C.A. degree from Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India, in 2011. Her research interest includes machine learning, computer vision, and cybersecurity. Her research spans applications of these areas to wearable devices, authentication, biometrics, and side channel attacks. Diksha&rsquos current research focuses on uncovering security threats and building secure authentication solutions for smart wearable devices. She has published in top-ranked machine learning and security journals and conferences including IEEE TIFS, ACM TOPS, ACM CCS, and ACM DTRAP, etc.

Dr. L. David Lal

Short Bio: Dr. L. David Lal is currently working as Assistant Professor in Political Science, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Information Technology, Guwahati, India. He did his PhD in Political Science from Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, India. Previously, he worked with University of Delhi worked as a Research Consultant at International Research Development Centre, Canada Action Aid- UK-India United Nations Development Programme India Dr. Lal has worked as Co-Project Director for Ministry of Panchayati Raj and Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, Govt. of India. He has published several articles in various research journals and research reports concerning the plight and rights of the marginalized sections in India, socio-economic policies, political representation of women etc. He regularly writes in Indian Express and other news portals.

Dr. Avishek Ray

Short Bio: He teaches at the National Institute of Technology Silchar. He is the author of The Vagabond in the South Asian Imagination: Representation, Agency & Resilience (Routledge, 2021) and co-editor of Nation, Nationalism and the Public Sphere: Religious Politics in India (SAGE, 2020). His research appears in South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, Contemporary South Asia, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Transfers: Interdisciplinary Journal of Mobility Studies, Tourism, Culture & Communication, among others and he has held research fellowships at the University of Edinburgh (UK), Purdue University Library (USA), Centre for Advanced Study, Sofia (Bulgaria), Mahidol University (Thailand) and Pavia University (Italy). In 2021, he was awarded Fulbright-Nehru Academic and Professional Excellence Fellowship.