Science Diplomacy meets Pluriversality in Language Technology
Recognizing and fostering alternate pathways to language technology / AI* 
 

Venue: Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark
Dates: Monday 1 June 2026, 13:00 - 17:00

The potential and need for science diplomacy in the field of AI is increasingly coming into focus as AI is an inherently global technology, as indicated by the special issue of the online journal Science Diplomacy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world's largest science association, and the UNESCO report on the UNESCO Global Ministerial Dialogue on Science Diplomacy. These publications discuss AI as the most controversial emerging technology and emphasise the challenges with respect to inequality, security and sustainability.

Pathways towards other versions of AI technology seem difficult; they are associated with fears of social and economic decline and instability. However, they also offer options and motivation for sustainability, social inclusion and justice, building on existing activities in countries in the Global South and North to diversify AI technology. That has the potential to challenge the technological dominance imposed through AI and offer alternatives to the concept of AI as a superintelligence.

Aim of the workshop is to provide a space for:

• Connecting scholars from computer science, the social sciences, and the humanities, who have started to re-envision AI in ways that enable a pluralistic, participatory, inclusive, and just design and implementation of technology. This approach is in tune with cultural and ecological diversity, and maintains and facilitates this diversity through technology, rather than incorporating it into systems.
• Bridging the so-called Global South and North, as well as the historically created boundaries and power hierarchies, by exploring commonalities and diversity, and by acknowledging the richness of epistemic differences in knowledge situated in language, socio-cultural backgrounds, and ecological habitats.
• Adopting a 'Manifesto for Pluriversality in AI*' that opens up the way we think about AI technology by discarding the idea of machine intelligence in favour of a sociotechnical system — an alternative idea of the technology that is still powerful but more viable.

PROGRAMME AT A GLANCE

The full programme and details for the workshop can be found here.

PARTICIPATION

If you are interested in participating please contact Gertraud Isabel Koch at gertraud.koch@uni-hamburg.de. 

ORGANIZERS

The workshop is organized by Gertraud Koch, University of Hamburg, Rachel Charlotte Smith, Aarhus University, Louis Fendji, University of Ngaoundere in Cameroon; in collaboration with the AIAS Science Diplomacy Group.