Topic Details

(1) Legal & Governance Perspectives on AI, probing fair regulatory frameworks; 

This topic examines the regulatory, ethical, and compliance challenges associated with AI deployment, with a focus on ensuring accountability, transparency, and fairness in algorithmic decision-making. It addresses AI’s role in public sector applications, such as criminal justice, administrative processes, and national security, while assessing risks related to bias, data privacy, and human rights.

• Algorithmic decision-making in the public sector, such as AI’s role in criminal justice, welfare distribution, and administrative processes, and the risks of bias, opacity, and accountability gaps.

• AI in state power, including its use in military applications, surveillance, policing, and border control, and the implications for human rights and civil liberties.

• Governance, regulation, and socioethics of AI, exploring models for ethical oversight, transparency, and public participation in AI development.

• Community resistance to AI, analyzing grassroots movements and legal challenges to AI deployment in sensitive domains.

• Sociopolitics of data, addressing questions of data ownership, consent, and oversight in an era of mass data extraction.

(2) Psychological & Organizational Perspectives, exploring human-AI dynamics; 

This topic investigates the cognitive, behavioral, and organizational impacts of AI, particularly in human-AI collaboration, workplace dynamics, and customer interactions. It analyzes the role of AI-driven tools, such as chatbots and robotic systems, in enhancing or disrupting social and professional relationships, including applications in healthcare, customer service, and HR.

• Role of robots and chatbots in social interaction, intimacy, care, and affect, including the ethical and psychological implications of AI-mediated relationships.

• AI as professional judgment, such as its use in evaluating medical scans, job applications, and other high-stakes decisions, and the consequences for trust and human expertise.

• Temporalities, routines, and everyday encounters with AI, examining how AI reshapes daily life, from personal assistants to automated customer service.

• Impacts of AI automation on work and livelihoods, including job displacement, deskilling, and the psychological toll of algorithmic management.

• Sociocultural narratives and imaginaries of AI, exploring how media, literature, and public discourse shape perceptions of AI’s capabilities and risks.

(3) Business Strategy & Microeconomics, assessing economic disruptions and equity; 

This topic focuses on the strategic and economic implications of AI, including its impact on market competition, business models, and labor markets. It evaluates how AI technologies reshape industries like education, healthcare, and finance, while addressing challenges related to inequality, workforce displacement, and skill gaps. 

• Large language models in education, health, and criminal justice, and their potential to disrupt traditional industries while creating new economic opportunities.

• AI intersections with race, gender, class, and other axes of social inequality, particularly in hiring, lending, and resource allocation.

• Geopolitical asymmetries in AI development, including data extraction, "ghost labor," and neocolonial dynamics in the Global South.

• GenAI and the future of authorship, creativity, and knowledge production, and the challenges to intellectual property and creative industries.

• AI’s environmental costs, such as energy consumption, e-waste, and its entanglement with the Anthropocene, as well as post-Anthropocene ethical frameworks.

(4) International Political Economy, addressing geopolitical hierarchies; 

This topic assesses AI’s role in global economic competition, trade dynamics, and geopolitical strategy. It explores how AI influences national security, cross-border data flows, and technological sovereignty, with a focus on the asymmetric distribution of AI capabilities between developed and emerging economies.

• Geopolitical asymmetries in AI development, including the concentration of AI power in a few states/corporations and its implications for global inequality.

• Decolonizing AI, with a focus on epistemic justice, plural knowledges, and the inclusion of marginalized voices in AI design and governance.

• AI and state power, particularly in military applications, surveillance, and border control, and the risks of authoritarianism and human rights abuses.

• Mis/disinformation and the politics of truth, including AI’s role in spreading or combating disinformation and its impact on democratic processes.

• Community resistance to AI, such as labor movements, indigenous activism, and civil society pushback against exploitative AI practices.

(5) Education for/with/by AI, focusing on literacy and ethics; and

This topic addresses the role of AI in education, training, and knowledge management, with an emphasis on preparing the future workforce for an AI-augmented economy. It explores the integration of AI tools in curriculum design, professional training, and lifelong learning, while addressing challenges such as academic integrity, skill obsolescence, and the evolving nature of expertise.

• Large language models in education, including their use as tutors, content creators, and assessment tools, and the risks of over-reliance on AI in learning.

• AI’s role in health and criminal justice education, such as training medical professionals or legal practitioners, and the ethical implications of AI-driven curricula.

• GenAI and the future of authorship and creativity, including debates over plagiarism, originality, and the role of AI in artistic and academic production.

• Education for AI literacy, preparing students and professionals to critically engage with AI tools and understand their societal impacts.

• Post-Anthropocene and multispecies ethics of AI, reimagining education to foster empathy, sustainability, and interspecies justice in an AI-mediated world.

(6) Open track.

The open track is for interesting and important submissions that are not covered under one of the earlier topics.