Closed Worlds & The Constitutive Outsides of Artificial Intelligence

This talk is offered as a contribution to the small but expanding movement to resist the proposition that artificial intelligence (A.I.) is the driving technology of our age. The aim is to anchor debate about the efficacy of algorithmic technologies in their politics, raising a set of questions otherwise absent from the discussion. I explore those questions in the domain on which my own research is focused, the martial epistemologies of data-driven warfighting, which is where algorithmic intensification has its most immediately lethal effects. The erasure of liveliness is central to the military programme, rendering always potentially unruly persons inside the machine as disciplined operators, while dehumanising those who are its justificatory targets.

The closed world is a trope, articulated most famously by historian of science Paul Edwards (1996), for the technopolitical imaginary of dominance and containment that underwrote the Cold War arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union at the close of the 20th century. Through a critical examination of the current U.S. project of Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), I examine the rebirth of AI as the promissory technological fix aimed at securing militarism’s future. I read documentary sources produced by the United States Department of Defense, along with defense related media reports and analyses, against recent challenges to the technopolitical imaginary of closed world militarism based on critical scholarship, investigative journalism, and creative diplomacy. These counter-stories challenge the attempt within martial epistemologies to make clean demarcations of enmity within complex relations of affinity and difference, recovering the realities that escape datafication and opening spaces in which to consider demilitarization and the possibilities for reparative future-making.

About the Speaker:

Lucy Suchman is a professor emeritus of the anthropology of science and technology at Lancaster University. She was previously a principal scientist at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where she spent twenty years as a researcher. During this period, she became widely recognized for her critical engagement with artificial intelligence, as well as her foundational contributions to a deeper understanding of both the essential connections and the profound differences between humans and machines. Suchman’s current research continues her long-standing critical engagement with A.I., focusing on the use of robotics in both healthcare and military contexts. Through this work, she examines how automation mediates questions of labor, humanity, and justice — and how these domains are increasingly entangled in complex, ethically charged ways.

Suchman is the author of Human-Machine Reconfigurations (2007, CUP) and Plans and Situated Actions: The Problem of Human-Machine Communication (1987, CUP), widely cited works that have reshaped our understanding of how people engage with intelligent systems. She was a founding member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, and served on its Board of Directors from 1982–1990. In 2002, she received the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Computer and Cognitive Sciences, in 2010 the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) Lifetime Research Award, and in 2014 the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S) Bernal Prize for Distinguished Contributions to the Field. In 2016, Suchman was an expert panelist at the UN’s Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, as a member of ICRAC.

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This is an online talk and audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society. It is open to the public and held on Zoom.

The featured speaker will present for 45 minutes, followed by an open discussion with participants.

About the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society:

The Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society is a research institute at the University of Toronto that explores the ethical and societal implications of technology. Our mission is to deepen our understanding of technologies, societies, and what it means to be human by integrating research across traditional boundaries and building practical, human-centred solutions that really make a difference.

We believe humanity still has the power to shape the technological revolution in positive ways, and we’re here to connect and collaborate with the brightest minds in the world to make that belief a reality. The integrative research we conduct rethinks technology’s role in society, the contemporary needs of human communities, and the systems that govern them. We’re investigating how best to align technology with human values and deploy it accordingly.

The human-centred solutions we build are actionable and practical, highlighting the potential of emerging technologies to serve the public good while protecting citizens and societies from their misuse.

The institute will be housed in the new $100 million Schwartz Reisman Innovation Centre currently under construction at the University of Toronto.