Tonight’s Event is Now Virtual: Co-Opting AI: FOOD

Please Note: Tonight’s Co-Opting AI: Food event will not be convening an audience due to the precautionary public health measures announced by New York University.

The speakers will be streaming their conversation live and taking questions via Twitter: @nyu_ipk.

Thank you for your cooperation and we hope you join the virtual conversation!

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This event examines how AI technology may affect the production, distribution and consumption of food.

NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, NYU Tandon’s Department for Technology, Culture and Society and the 370???? Project invite you to a discussion on diplomacy in the series on “Co-Opting AI.” Featuring Gillian Gualtieri, Zenia Kish, Wythe Marschall and Mona Sloane in conversation, this event examines the intersection of food and AI technology. How does AI technology affect the production, distribution and consumption of food? What kinds of social, technological and cultural futures are imagined by those who design new technologies for the food sector? In what ways does the intersection of tech and food perpetuate or challenge socio-economic privileges and inequality? The panelists will come together to provide their expertise on technology, food, agriculture, sociology, and cultural studies to consider these questions.

Gillian Gualtieri is a Provost’s Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Public Knowledge and in the Department of Food Studies at New York University. She holds a PhD and MA in Sociology from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA in English Literature and Sociology from Kenyon College. Her research, which has been published in Gender Issues, Research in Management and Organizations, and Sociological Forum, broadly considers the relationship between organizations, culture, and inequality.

Zenia Kish is Assistant Professor of Media Studies at The University of Tulsa, where her work explores digital media, sociotechnical imaginaries of food and agriculture, and philanthrocapitalism. She is part of the Agri-Food Technology Research (AFTeR) Project, based at UC Santa Cruz, which examines new food and agricultural technologies emerging from Silicon Valley. She is writing a book on philanthrocapitalist media culture, and is co-editor of the forthcoming collection, Food and Instagram: Identity, Influence and Resistance.

Wythe Marschall is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard, a research associate in controlled environment agriculture (CEA, or “vertical farming”) at Cornell University, and a board member of the nonprofit FarmTech Society. He researches future visions of farming, biological design, architecture and urban planning, and plant–human interactions. Wythe’s dissertation, an ethnography of agricultural technology startups in greater New York City, examines the production of different economic, social, and environmental values through vertical farming. He documents how a cohort of urban millennials are attempting to use technology to redesign the U.S. food system and even achieve food justice. Previously, Wythe co-founded the Biodesign Challenge; lectured in the English Department of Brooklyn College, CUNY; curated art-and-science exhibitions; wrote an Internet show about the history of science; and worked in health and wellness advertising.

The Co-Opting AI series is convened by Mona Sloane.

Image credit: Philipp Hertel