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Rida is an interdisciplinary AI researcher specializing in the cultural impacts of AI technologies in the Global South. As a Senior Research Scientist at Google Research, her work re-imagines AI technologies to reflect the richness of global cultures and seeks to build AI pipelines that empower communities in the Global South. She has published widely in top-tier venues across the social sciences and computer science, including Big Data & Society, CSCW, CHI and FAccT and sits on the editorial board of the journal Cambridge Forum on AI: Culture and Society. She has contributed op-eds for publications like Wired, Guardian, Slate and Vice. Rida holds a PhD in Computational Urban Science and a Master’s in Urban Studies from MIT.
Talk: Studying GenAI as a Cultural Technology: Provocations for Understanding the Cultural Entanglements of AI
Abstact: This talk argues for the need to study Generative AI as a “cultural technology”, tracing the complex and multifaceted interactions of AI pipelines with human cultures. This entanglement necessitates we both situate generative AI within a broader cultural context and also be specific about its technological mechanisms. I bring up questions of what it might mean to historicize generative AI within a lineage of ‘cultural technologies’, like the camera and telegraph, and propose methods for studying generative AI that learn from the dynamic and contingent nature of these technologies' cultural impact. This talk shows how we can take a more historicized, deliberative and interdisciplinary approach to grappling with GenAI’s role in our collective cultural worlds.