MAX-PLANCK-INSTITUT FÜR WISSENSCHAFTSGESCHICHTE Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Event

Sep 24, 2021
Breaking Models: Data Governance and New Metrics of Knowledge in the Time of the Pandemic

  • 09:30 to 17:00
  • Workshop
  • Dept. I
  • Several Speakers
  • Kishor Bhat and Manish Gautam
  • Paolo Caffoni
  • Ariana Dongus
  • Sascha Freyberg
  • Matteo Pasquinelli
  • Max Grünberg
  • Tobias Haberkorn
  • Arif Kornweitz
  • Yishu Mao
  • Tania Rispoli
  • Oliver Schlaudt

The COVID pandemic has made us all familiar with graphs that predict the degree of collective contagion and, on a daily basis, warn the population about the risk of infection. Such a pervasive computational infrastructure for tracking, measuring and forecasting the behaviour of the social body is unprecedented in the history of healthcare and biopolitics. The infrastructure for monitoring the pandemic built upon existing digital platforms that already organise most of the social relations of the present. The pandemic is an exemplary case to study infrastructures and computational models, as well as their impact which was exposed and accelerated during this time.

The interdisciplinary workshop BREAKING MODELS aims to analyse the influence of these vast computational platforms, predictive models and metrics not only on the knowledge of the pandemic, but also on society at large, that is on labour, education and scientific research.

Discussants:
Xian Biao (MPIEF), Flavio D’Abramo (MPIWG), Adam Wickberg (MPIWG), Politically Mathematics Collective (India)...among others.

 

Organizer(s)
Address
Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany
Contact and Registration

Registration to the workshop is free. To register or propose a paper write to workshop@allmodels.ai.

About This Series

A Collobaration of KIM Research Group (HfG Karlsruhe) and MPIWG (Berlin). Funded by the Volkswagen Foundation program “Corona Crisis and Beyond.”

Hybrid event: online and offline at Max Planck Institute for the History of Science.

 

Download Poster
BM-KIM-Poster.pdf

 

 

KIM: Breaking Models: Data Governance and New Metrics of Knowledge in the Time of the Pandemic
2021-09-24T09:30:00SAVE IN I-CAL 2021-09-24 09:30:00 2021-09-24 17:00:00 Breaking Models: Data Governance and New Metrics of Knowledge in the Time of the Pandemic The COVID pandemic has made us all familiar with graphs that predict the degree of collective contagion and, on a daily basis, warn the population about the risk of infection. Such a pervasive computational infrastructure for tracking, measuring and forecasting the behaviour of the social body is unprecedented in the history of healthcare and biopolitics. The infrastructure for monitoring the pandemic built upon existing digital platforms that already organise most of the social relations of the present. The pandemic is an exemplary case to study infrastructures and computational models, as well as their impact which was exposed and accelerated during this time. The interdisciplinary workshop BREAKING MODELS aims to analyse the influence of these vast computational platforms, predictive models and metrics not only on the knowledge of the pandemic, but also on society at large, that is on labour, education and scientific research. Discussants: Xian Biao (MPIEF), Flavio D’Abramo (MPIWG), Adam Wickberg (MPIWG), Politically Mathematics Collective (India)...among others.   Program 09:30-10:00 — Introduction Sascha Freyberg (HfG Karlsruhe / MPIWG)  Matteo Pasquinelli (HfG Karlsruhe)  Screening of Clemens von Wedemeyer’s Transformation Scenario(2018) 10:00-11:00 — The Politics of Predictive Models  Kishor Bhat and Manish Gautam (Politically Mathematics Collective, India) “On the Ethical and Social Implications of Mathematical Models” Max Grünberg (HfG Karlsruhe) “The Administration of Things: Automating Business Forecasts in the Case of Amazon Web Services” 11:30-12:30 — Data Infrastructures and Social Inequality Arif Kornweitz (HfG Karlsruhe)  “Friction, Leaks and Creep: COVID-19 Governance and Data Rights in the Netherlands” Ariana Dongus (HfG Karlsruhe)  “The Global Logistics of Vaccination: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Amplified Inequalities” Yishu Mao (MPIWG Berlin) “AI Ethics Made in China: Technological Promises and Labor Realities” 14:00-15:00 — New Metrics of Life and Labour  Paolo Caffoni (HfG Karlsruhe) “The Digital Walls of the University: New Metrics of Labour, Education and Mobility in the COVID-19 Crisis” Tania Rispoli (Duke University, Durham) “The New Metrics of Care: Feminist Perspectives on the Crisis of Reproductive Labour” 15:30-17:00 — Critical Perspectives and Final Discussion  Tobias Haberkorn (Berlin/Rome) “Modeling and the Media. Scientific vs. Political Logics of Expertise” Oliver Schlaudt  (University College Freiburg / SciencesPo Nancy) “The Covid-19 Pandemic as a Challenge to Critical Science Studies”   With discussants among others: Flavio D’Abramo, MPIWG Xian Biao, MPI for Social Anthropology Politically Math Collective, India Adam Wickberg, MPIWG Preliminary Reading List Adam, David (2020) “The simulations driving the world’s response to COVID-19” in Nature April 2, 2020. Online: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01003-6  Bates, J. (2017). The politics of data friction. Journal of Documentation, 74(2), 412–429. https://doi.org/10.1108/JD-05-2017-0080 Cepelewicz, Jordana. (2021) “The Hard Lessons of Modeling the Coronavirus Pandemic.” Quanta Magazine, January 21, 2021. Online:  https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-hard-lessons-of-modeling-the-coronavirus-pandemic-20210128 Cf. https://www.quantamagazine.org/videos/why-covid-19-models-dont-predict-the-future D’Abramo, Flavio (2021) “The past and present of pandemic management: health diplomacy, international epidemiological surveillance, and COVID‐19” in HPLS (2021) 43:64. Online: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-021-00416-4 Edwards, P. N. (2010). A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming. MIT Press. (see esp. ch. 1 & 5) Gelfert, Axel (2016) How to Do Science with Models. A Philosophical Primer. Cham: Springer Nature. https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007%2F978-3-319-27954- Haberkorn, Tobias (2021) “The great corona modelling controversy” in Berliner Zeitung July 25, 2021. Online: https://www.berliner-zeitung.de/en/the-great-corona-modelling-controversy-were-contact-restrictions-overrated-li.171039 Heaven, Will Douglas (2020). “Our weird behaviour during the pandemic is messing with AI models” in MIT Technology Review. Online: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/05/11/1001563/covid-pandemic-broken-ai-machine-learning-amazon-retail-fraud-humans-in-the-loop Jones, David S. and Helmreich, Stefan (2020) “The Shape of Epidemics”, in Boston Review. June 24, 2020. Online: http://bostonreview.net/science-nature/david-s-jones-stefan-helmreich-shape-epidemics. Cf. disaster-sts-network.org/content/shape-epidemics-2020 Kornweitz, Arif (2021) “Function Creep: Change as a trace of dominant norms”, in A New AI Lexicon, AI Now Institute. New York. Online: https://medium.com/a-new-ai-lexicon/a-new-ai-lexicon-function-creep-1c20834fab4a Leonardi,  Paul (2021) “COVID-19 and the New Technologies of Organizing: Digital Exhaust, Digital Footprints, and Artificial Intelligence in the Wake of Remote Work.” Journal of Management Studies, 58,  249-253. https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12648 Rispoli, Tania and Tola, Miriam (2020) “Reinventing Socio-Ecological Reproduction, Designing a Feminist Logistics: Perspectives from Italy”, in Feminist Studies 46.3 (SPECIAL ISSUE: FEMINIST ANALYSIS OF COVID-19). Online: http://www.feministstudies.org/issues/vol-40-49/46-3.html Tathagata et al. (2020) “What Modeling the Pandemic Reveals about Our Mathematics”. Online: https://www.politicallymath.in/what-modeling-the-pandemic-reveals-about-our-mathematics Initiatives Politically Math (India) https://www.politicallymath.in Disaster STS Network: https://disaster-sts-network.org/about Post Pandemic University (UK) https://postpandemicuniversity.net The Mobility, Technology and Wellbeing Lab, directed by Xiang Biao at the MPI for Social Anthropology:  https://www.eth.mpg.de/molab-inventory/shock-immobilities The Coronavirus and Mobility Forum, facilitated by Xiang Biao at the COMPAS, University of Oxford (2020) https://www.compas.ox.ac.uk/project/the-coronavirus-and-mobility-forum Boltzmannstraße 22, 14195 Berlin, Germany Sascha FreybergMatteo Pasquinelli Sascha FreybergMatteo Pasquinelli Europe/Berlin public