Introducing Semeli Hadjiloizou
What’s your background?
As someone fascinated by the intersection of the creative arts, technology, and society, I have aimed to cultivate an interdisciplinary background merging all three of these areas. During my undergraduate studies in film and television, I examined how human-like AI is portrayed in popular science fiction narratives through a critical gender and race theory lens. I then entered the technology/telecommunications industry as part of a two-year graduate programme and worked across data and insights, Internet of Things, and legal teams. During this time, I became increasingly interested in how our digital society is shaped through overlapping social, political, and technical factors. This led me to pursue the MSc in Data and Society (Media and Communications) at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) as a recipient of the Onassis Scholarship Foundation. At the LSE, my research focused on data justice through topics such as data activism, data feminism, and environmental data justice. Alongside my master’s studies, I also completed a research consultancy project for the United Nations World Food Programme’s Emergency Telecommunications Cluster and participated in a local Neighbourhood Data Ethics Committee.
Currently, I am a Researcher in Data Justice and Global Ethical Futures at The Alan Turing Institute’s Ethics and Responsible Innovation team. Within this role, I have the opportunity to work on a range of impact-driven projects that centre on advocating for a more equitable sociotechnical ecosystem. These projects include working with 12 civil society organisations from around the world to advance data justice research and practice and co-developing the Global AI Ethics and Governance Observatory with UNESCO and the International Telecommunications Union.
What excites you about Arts, Data Science, and AI?
Guided by my interdisciplinary arts, humanities, and social sciences background, I am particularly interested in how the creative arts can probe into critical ethical and social questions surrounding the entire lifecycle of a data-intensive technology, such as AI. The creative arts can offer a much-needed evaluation of the apparent ‘objectivity’ or ‘rationality’ that guides the design, development, and deployment of data-intensive technologies by revealing how these processes are inherently rooted within specific sociocultural contexts.
These investigations are especially critical with the proliferation of image generation models that have been repeatedly shown to perpetuate longstanding social biases and stereotypes. I am especially interested in how artists are critiquing and subverting these patterns whether through technological practices or otherwise. Related to this topic, our team at the Turing recently held a workshop exploring how images portraying AI or generated by AI can be made more inclusive and representative. The conceptual framing of this session was rooted in the learnings from the data justice movement and highlighted the urgent need to evaluate how AI generated materials are impacting cultural narratives and vice versa.
I particularly welcome members to reach out to me in the group’s Slack space about…
…creative projects that engage with critical sociocultural questions around data ethics, data justice, or environmental data justice. Within this, I am really interested in exploring participatory approaches that engage with a wide range of stakeholders to understand how each of our positionalities influences our interactions with data-intensive technologies or the different ways in which adverse impacts from data-intensive technologies are experienced.
Do reach out to discuss ideas and potential collaborations.
What’s a recent artwork (any discipline) that made an impression on you?
In the past year, the art exhibition that has made the biggest impression on me is the work by Magdalena Abakanowicz, ‘Every Tangle of Thread and Rope’, shown at the Tate Modern. I was especially mesmerised by her ceiling-high woven structures that are composed of a mesh of organic fibres. These structures seem to take on a life of their own, capturing the inherent interconnectedness of life’s beings and forms.
