2024 Academy Theme
Belonging in the Age of Machines: Reimagining the Soul of Media
The 2024 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change asked how we could find belonging in an age of machines through envisioning media practices and pedagogies that emphasize care and meaningful connections around and through media. There are many ways in which we care. Still, as media practitioners, we are often encouraged to set ourselves apart from what we care about through objectivity in research and storytelling.
Increasingly, media technologies encourage us to outsource much of our creative practice to generative artificial intelligence, and we live in a world where our connections to ourselves and each other become more splintered and mediated. The most lost thing in this transaction is that creative imagination and expression through art allow us to find deeper emotional connections. What happens if we lose that connection forever? What happens when we outsource our creativity and imagination to machines for posterity?
Public opinion is split on whether AI will help or harm our future, but one thing is certain — AI reflects humanity. Deep machine learning scrapes the internet to learn about us and produces a mirror image of what it has learned based on enormous datasets. It is not asked to innovate but to recognize and replicate existing behaviors.
Science fiction author Isaac Asimov once wrote three laws for robotics:
- A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
- A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders conflict with the first law.
- A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first and second laws.
Asimov’s laws have served as a basis for both fictional and theoretical discussions about conscious technology; however, Asimov’s three laws also reflect how humans might begin to think of and care for each other. As we consider what values we teach technology, we might also pause to consider the values we teach ourselves. Asimov wrote the laws not as a guidepost for future technologies but as a moral quandary for humanity.
Science fiction often asks if machines can, indeed, have a soul. These mediations are taken literally in the tech world, but the underlying theme of many foundational science fiction works is to use the machine as an allegory for humanity. Do we have souls? And more to the point, can we view others as having souls? What does it mean to be ‘soulful’?
Since the Industrial Revolution, machines have become more integrated into our lives. Machines have made things easier and more convenient, but at the same time, they have created distance, spread propaganda, and, in some cases, destroyed communities. In previous academies, we have challenged students to imagine the future. For the 2024 Academy, we asked students to take on the monumental task of reimagining the soul of media. To build systems that emphasize care and push a radical human agenda in the age of machines.
The following overarching questions guided our discussions in Salzburg:
- What lessons are we teaching AI, and what is AI teaching us about ourselves?
- How can we use technology and creative imagination to envision soulful media environments supporting inclusive and equitable futures?
- What media literacies are necessary to foster and support stronger global communities centered around belonging and care in the age of machines?
We explored these questions — and seeked solutions — at the 2024 Salzburg Academy on Media & Global Change.
View the official photo album of the program.
