Seminar Series “Cross-Cultural Approaches to Desirable AI 2nd Edition”

Building on the success and strong interest of last year, the B’AI Global Forum will co-host a seminar series titled “Cross-Cultural Approaches to Desirable AI 2nd Edition” in collaboration with the University of Bonn, the University of Cambridge, and the University of Europe for Applied Sciences.
We invite you to register and take part in the sessions that interest you.

◇Dates & Venue

・Dates: Thursdays (Irregular; Please refer to the schedule below), from October 22th (Wednesday), 2025, to January 22nd, 2026, 19:00-21:00※ (JST)
※Due to daylight saving time, only on October 22, the session will be held from 18:00 to 20:00.
・Venue: Online via Zoom (Pre-registration Required)
・Language: English
・Registration: Please access this link and register via the “Subscribe” tab on the left side of the page.

◇About the series

Following the success and strong interest generated last year, the online seminar series “Cross-Cultural Approaches to Desirable AI” continues this year. The series aims to encourage intercultural and interdisciplinary discussion on the ethics of artificial intelligence (AI). Its primary focus is to support and develop research on AI and social justice, particularly from intersectional feminist and anti-racist perspectives.

We bring together researchers working on AI and digital technologies of all career stages from a variety of disciplines. The series seeks to bridge perspectives from the arts and sciences, with a particular emphasis on encouraging students with technical and engineering backgrounds to engage with ethical issues surrounding AI.

The concept of “desirable AI” refers to the development of technology that places social justice and environmental sustainability at its core. Rather than simply optimizing technology, the goal is to design AI that reflects and respects the diverse values and needs of different cultures. This approach requires acknowledging different worldviews while avoiding issues such as cultural appropriation and “diversity washing” in technology development.

This year, we continue our exploration of cross-cultural and ethical perspectives on AI with new themes and areas of inquiry. Rather than centering sessions on geographical regions, we focus on cross-cultural dialogue around shared thematic questions. To do so, we bring together experts from across different communities and disciplines. Among the topics we will highlight are: Spiritual traditions and AI ethics beyond the individual, bringing Buddhist and Ubuntu principles into dialogue with questions of technology and humanity, and Contextualised perspectives on large language models, examining bias, erasure, and situated methods across languages and regions.

By extending these conversations, the series continues to foster a pluralistic and inclusive vision of AI — one that remains deeply attentive to cultural context, social justice, and the shared pursuit of desirable futures.

◇Schedule

October 22th Intro Session

November 13th Responsibility

November 20th Arts and Crafts

November 27th Education

December 4th Be(yond) Human

December 11th Digital “Well-being”

December 18th Work/Labour

January 8th Bias and Contextualization in LLMs

January 15th Ontologies

January 22nd Outro Session

◇Organizers
B’AI Global Forum, Institute for AI and Beyond, The University of Tokyo; Center for Science and thought, The University of Bonn; Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence, The University of Cambridge; The University of Europe for Applied Sciences

◇Inquiry
B’AI Global Forum Office
bai.global.forum[at]gmail.com（Please change [at] to @）