Data Centers

How can we understand the material impacts of AI in and around Atlanta as Georgia becomes the state with the most number of new data center contracts? What are local (or global!) concerns of our communities? How are our communities taking action to shape the conversation? 

AI Civics

What is the relationship between AI and various forms of democracy and public life, from representational politics to direct action? How can the humanities’ long-standing engagement with theories and critiques of democracy provide insight into what it might mean to democratize AI or use AI for democratic ends? How can a critical understanding of participation and institutions contribute to our understanding of the interplay of AI and civics? How can we better understand Atlanta’s role as both a site of intense AI-enhanced surveillance, and a home to companies that are exporting that to the world? What does AI civics mean in the context of the South vs. elsewhere?

AI and Archives

How does the humanities’ deep engagement with archives, in both theory and practice, shape our understanding of the data used to train AI? Can AI be used to surface new knowledge from existing archives, physical or digital—and if so, how? What are the tensions between these two lines of inquiry? 

Small Language Models

How, and under what conditions, can small language models be used to advance humanities research? Are there lessons from small modeling approaches that might carry over to large ones? What cultural narratives around speed, scale, and innovation need to be rewritten in order to make space for this work?

AI Literacies

What does it mean to be “AI literate”? How do people in various contexts define what “AI literacy” means? What are the limits of “literacy” as a framework for knowledge and understanding? What more empowering approaches to learning about AI might we envision?

Capitalism, Anti-Capitalism, and Critique

How is capitalism fueling the rise of Big Tech? What are some anticapitalist alternatives, past or present? How can ideas from the fields of Black studies, feminist studies, queer studies, Indigenous studies, and allied fields shed light on these questions?