Co-Opting AI: Math

NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, Sloane Lab, and the Karsh Institute of Democracy at the University of Virginia invite you to a new discussion in the series “Co-Opting AI.” This will be a completely virtual event.

Please register for the event here.

This event will scrutinize AI’s ontological infrastructure—math—and examine how statistics became instrumental for describing the social world.

Aubrey Clayton is a mathematician who teaches courses in the philosophy of probability and statistics at the Harvard Extension School, and the author of Bernoulli’s Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science (2021). He holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Nautilus, and The Boston Globe.

Theodore Porter is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at UCLA. He has authored several books, including The Rise of Statistical Thinking, 1820-1900; and Trust in Numbers: The Pursuit of Objectivity in Science and Public Life. His most recent book is Genetics in the Madhouse: The Unknown History of Human Heredity. He graduated from Stanford University with an A.B. in history in 1976 and earned a Ph.D. from Princeton University in 1981. In 2008, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2023, he received the George Sarton Medal for lifetime achievement from the History of Science Society.

Alma Steingart, an assistant professor in the Department of History at Columbia University, researches the interplay between American politics and mathematical rationalities. Professor Steingart’s current project, Accountable Democracy, examines how mathematical thought and computing technologies have impacted electoral politics in the United States in the twentieth century. It follows on her first book, Axiomatics: Mathematical Thought and High Modernism (2023). Steingart’s work has appeared in Social Studies of Science, Grey Room, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. Her work is supported by a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

Mona Sloane, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Data Science and Media Studies at the University of Virginia (UVA). As a sociologist, she studies the intersection of technology and society, specifically in the context of AI design, use, and policy. She also convenes the Co-Opting AI series and serves as the editor of the Co-Opting AI book series at the University of California Press as well as the Technology Editor for Public Books. At UVA, Mona runs Sloane Lab which conducts empirical research on the implications of technology for the organization of social life. Its focus lies on AI as a social phenomenon that intersects with wider cultural, economic, material, and political conditions. The lab spearheads social science leadership in applied work on responsible AI, public scholarship, and technology policy. More here: monasloane.org.

The Co-Opting AI event series is convened by Mona Sloane. It is hosted by NYU’s Institute for Public Knowledge, UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy, and Sloane Lab.