Seminar “Critiquing AI: Artificial Intelligence Through the Lens of its Controversies”
After a year-long hiatus, the “AI Critique” seminar returns to the CNRS Center for Internet and Society. For this edition, Marie Garin (postdoctoral researcher at CIS) and I are pleased to be joined by sociologist Olivier Alexandre as co-facilitators of these meetings organized as part of the “Critique of Artificial Intelligence” working group of the GDR Internet, AI and Society.
You can register for sessions here
2026 Season Overview
As critical discourses on AI —whether scholarly, professional, political, or mundane— are increasingly salient, this seminar aims to examine the objects of this critique and what they reveal about the social and political dimensions of new technologies. Through sessions combining two approaches to the same issue, we will identify the grounding, forms, and modes of circulation of AI critiques. Six controversies will be successively addressed: the dominance of major digital companies, AI’s impacts on work, AI-related discrimination, its “ethical” dimension, its place in education, and the “openness” of AI systems.
2026 Schedule
Monday, January 12, 2026 — Economy
Videoconference, 5-7 PM (session in English)
- Cecilia Rikap (University College London, IIPP), “Extractivisms and Reconfiguration of Centers and Peripheries in AI Capitalism”
- Nick Srnicek (King’s College London), “The Rise of Silicon Empires”
Monday, February 9, 2026 — Labor
CNRS Pouchet site and videoconference, 4-6 PM
- Yann Ferguson (Inria, LaborIA), “Darwin, Prometheus, Taylor and Habermas: What AI at Work?”
- Juan Sebastian Carbonell (University of Liège, Pragmapolis), “Your Boss is Not an Algorithm: Uses and Limits of Algorithmic Management in Logistics”
Monday, March 9, 2026 — Discrimination
CNRS Pouchet site and videoconference, 4-6 PM
- Laurence Barry (PARI Chair), “From Statistical Discrimination to Scoring: AI Issues in Insurance”
- Julie Marques (INSA Rennes, LFPC), “Thinking about Discrimination in the AI Era: Practices, Resistances and Social Justice”
Monday, March 30, 2026 — Ethics
CNRS Pouchet site and videoconference, 4-6 PM
- Angèle Christin (Stanford University, Communication Department), “Taking Ethics as an Object: Transformations of Ethical AI in Silicon Valley”
- Valérie Beaudouin (EHESS, Cems) and Julia Velkovska (Orange Labs, Cems), “Investigating AI Ethics”
Monday, April 13, 2026 — Education
CNRS Pouchet site and videoconference, 4-6 PM
- Bilel Benbouzid (Université Gustave Eiffel, Lisis), “Explain it to Me Like I’m Ten: An Investigation into the Conditions of Student Work with Generative AI”
- Christophe Cailleaux (history-geography teacher and co-head of the digital sector at SNES-FSU), “AI and Education: Towards a Precautionary Principle”
Monday, May 11, 2026 — Open AI?
CNRS Pouchet site and videoconference, 4-6 PM
- Gaël Varoquaux (Inria, Probabl) and Michel-Marie Maudet (Linagora)