In democracy, language is essential. With the ongoing integration of Large Language Model-based technologies like ChatGPT into a host of digital platforms, AI-technologies will soon be integral to the processes of cultural meaning-making, civic deliberation, and community-building in the democratic public sphere. Hence, this project asks, what kinds of publics and communities will emerge when discussions on political issues become entangled with and assisted by AI-driven ‘info-discursive auxiliaries’? Who gets to talk? In whose language? What kind of citizens will, and could, we become?
Jan Løhmann Stephensen, Phd, Associate Professor in Aesthetics & Culture at Aarhus University. Questions such as What could participation also look like? and Who, or what, matters as proper participants in political democratic and/or cultural creative processes? have been central to his research and publications. In addition, from perspectives of political economy and sociology of both work and art/culture, he has focused on the increased ‘creativization’ of our (working) lives, in later years with a special interest in the interplay between human actors on the one hand; and on the other: artificial intelligence and related computational technologies of automation.
Project title: Chat Democracy: AI, Democratic Talk, and a New Shared Language
Area of research: Aesthetics and culture
Fellowship period: 1 Sep 2024 - 30 Jun 2025
Fellowship type: AIAS-SHAPE Fellow
Contact: jloehmanns@aias.au.dk
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This fellowship has received funding from The Aarhus University Research Foundation (AUFF)