Prof. Dr. Michelle Christensen & Prof. Dr. Florian Conradi
Bias + AI – Composing Critique
Block seminar, English, 2 SWS, 2 ECTS, 10 places
Course Duration: 6.- 10.10.2025, 10-17 h, Introduction: 6.10.2025 at 10 h
Room: Berlin Open Lab, Universität der Künste Berlin, Einsteinufer 43, 10587 Berlin

Registration: Please register beforehand to michelle.christensen@tu-berlin.de!

As artificial intelligence finds its way into the mundanity of everyday life, constantly scanning and categorising us to provide the highest level of contended comfort and effortless efficiency, the systems that surround us are increasingly mediating our knowledge, actions, and behaviours. Search engine queries, autocomplete, autocorrect, personalised aides and chatbots mediate our every uncertainty – all neatly presented and packaged to relieve our regular routines. But who gets to make the narratives of technologies like AI, and who becomes produced as the technical outcasts of its limited learnings? Who and what gets misread and overheard and suffers the consequences of its immense analysis?
Currently, we can witness the hegemony of binary heteronormative gender conceptions and western values expanding to all territories of the globe – colonising the internet with perceptions, practices and probabilities that include some, and exclude others. These deeds of design culminate in constituting codes of conduct that ultimately manufacture im/possibilities of perceiving both histories and presents.

In this one-week block-seminar we will take an applied and interdisciplinary approach to exploring forms of bias in the design of AI. We will locate real-world examples on the topic, engage personally with generative systems, and inspired by approaches from queer and feminist theory and technology – we will prototype forms of 'hacking back' (no prior experience with design or technology necessary).

Literature:
- Buolamwini, J. & Gebru, T. (2018): Gender Shades: Intersectional Accuracy Disparities in Commercial Gender Classification, in: Proceedings of Machine Learning Research 81:1–15.
- Keyes, O. (2018): The Misgendering Machines. Trans/HCI Implications of Automatic Gender Recognition, in: Proceedings of the ACM on Human- Computer Interaction, Vol. 2.
- Haraway, D. (1985): A Manifesto for Cyborgs. Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1980s, in: Socialist Review 1985, 5 (2), pp. 65–107.
- Klein, L & D'Ignazio, C. (2020): Data Feminism. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
- Russell, L. (2020): Glitch Feminism – A Manifesto. London and New York: Verso Books.

Michelle Christensen and Florian Conradi co-head the research group Design, Diversity and New Commons at the UdK Berlin in the framework of the Weizenbaum Institute. Currently, Michelle teaches as a visiting professor for Open Science & Critical Culture at the TU Berlin / Einstein Center Digital Future, and Florian teaches as a visiting professor for Design Research & Critical Design at the Institute of Theater Studies (KMM) at the FU Berlin. Combining their backgrounds in political-, conflict-, gender-sociology and design in the form of critical practice, writing and teaching, they attempt to formulate the spaces in between these realms. Their research, teaching and experimental design practice focuses particularly on feminist / queer, beyond western-centric and postanthropocentric approaches to design, using practice-based methodologies and free / open technology practices (critical making and designing) to illicit critiques and counter-practices.