How positive or negative is the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Despite its potential, most people are worried about the impact AI may have on their lives, including discrimination and unemployment. This talk will present a novel approach to help improve regulation of AI to become more inclusive and to avoid future harms from emerging technologies. To this end it utilizes arts-based research methods such as speculative design and Science Fiction prototyping. Its use in other disciplines has already shown its potential in helping policy discussions to become more inclusive towards underrepresented stakeholder communities and alternative perspectives. After presenting her research and recent findings from speculative design workshops in Japan and Taiwan, the speaker will invite the audience to actively take part in a speculative design exercise to experience how thinking about the future may help us make better decisions in the present. Details and registration here

Against the background of neoliberal university labour conditions, expectations of work-life balance, and environmental concerns, long-term fieldwork is becoming difficult for researchers using ethnographic methods. Gökçe Günel and Chika Watanabe propose ‘patchwork ethnography’ to consolidate the innovations that are already happening in ethnographic research out of necessity—to balance family and research, for example—but that remain black boxed. Patchwork ethnography begins from the acknowledgement that recombinations of ‘home’ and ‘field’ have perhaps always existed in fieldwork practices. However, the interpenetration of the personal with the professional is often deemed illegitimate in research practices. This talk presents patchwork ethnography as a provocation to open spaces of honest conversation so that models other than uninterrupted fieldwork can become recognized methodological approaches, while still upholding the importance of long-term commitments, language proficiency, and contextual knowledge. Details and registration here

Rapid advancements in new technologies, such as robots and AI, have brought about new social practices and realities. They come with manifold expectations and concerns, which mirror our understanding of what it means to be human. Drawing on perspectives from technological development, psychology, philosophy, social sciences, literature and art studies, the panel discussion ‘Human-Machine Interaction and Responsibility’ will tackle psycho-social aspects of human-machine interaction and their consequences, as well as ethical, legal, and socio-political implications. One important issue will be people’s rights and responsibilities when collaborating with machines and AI: Who will be credited for achievements, and who will be held responsible for tragic accidents? How does responsibility depend on the context and type of interaction between humans and machines? How should robots or AI be designed to be beneficial for society? The event takes place on March 27, on-site only at the DIJ, and will be moderated by DIJ’s Celia Spoden. Details and registration information here

Six former and current DIJ researchers who have contributed to the DIJ’s research cluster The Future of Local Communities in Japan – Risks and Opportunities in the Face of Multiple Challenges will give presentations on their research results at the conference ‘Local Self-organization and Civic Engagement in Regional Japan’ on March 7, 2023, on-site only at the DIJ. Topics covered include social welfare provision, volunteerism, regional theatre, fishery cooperatives, and shifting state-society relations. They will be complemented with presentations by prominent Japanese scholars in the field. The conference will close with a book break introducing Rethinking Locality in Japan (eds. Sonja Ganseforth & Hanno Jentzsch, Routledge 2022). Details and registration here