2025.Oct.12

EVENTS

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

Thomas Metcalf (IWE, Uni Bonn): Sustainability and Political Education.
Sebastian Gehrmann (Bloomberg LP): tba
Alina Mozolevska (Petro Mohyla Black Sea State University; Wissenschaftskolleg Berlin): Media Witnessing and Moral Responsibility: VR, AI, and the Ethics of Seeing in the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Titlope F. Ajayi (Institute for Security Studies): Whose Peace and at What Cost? Feminist Interrogations of AI in African Security Policy.

Chairs: Eleanor Drage (LCFI, Cambridge) and Jiré Emine Gözen (UE).

November 20th Arts and Crafts

Puja Aanand and Alok Bhasin (Pearl Academy): Preserving the Past, Designing the Future: A New Paradigm for Design Education and SDG Alignment.
Goda Klumbyte (University of Kassel; Weizenbaum Institute): Material critique, abstract creativity: working towards a transdisciplinary critical technical practice.

Chairs: Eleanor Drage (LCFI, Cambridge) and Jiré Emine Gözen (UE).

November 27th Education

Marisol Flores-Garrido and Marcela Moales-Magaña: Situated Appropriations of AI: Ethical Guidelines from a Global South University.
Christian Stracke (Uni Bonn): (Ethical) AI and (School) Education.
Eman AbuKhousa (UE Dubai): Learning Design for Global Minds and Desirable AI.

Chairs: Eleanor Drage (LCFI, Cambridge) and Jiré Emine Gözen (UE).

December 4th Be(yond) Human

Wakanyi Hoffman (Inclusive AI Lab, Utrecht University): Beyond Big Data: Learning to Read AI as a Relational Field using Clariscopic Ubuntu Vision.
Shoukei Matsumoto: Human Literacy in the Age of AI.

Chairs: Ai Hisano (B’AI Global Forum, UTokyo) and Christiane Schäfer (CST, Uni Bonn)

December 11th Digital “Well-being”

Mamun Rashid (SYNC, Ithra): Offline Is the New Luxury? Exploring the Right to Disconnect – Connect.
Matthew J. Dennis (TU Eindhoven): Who is Responsible for Digital Well-Being?
Julia Maria Mönig (CST, Uni Bonn): The luxury of digital well-being: privacy as privilege.

Chairs: Ai Hisano and Sunjin Oh (B’AI Global Forum, UTokyo)

December 18th Work/Labour

Jurgita Imbrasaite (CST, Uni Bonn): AI and the Critique of the Modern Labor Paradigm.
Avantika Tewari (Jindal Global Law School): The Paradox of Data Prosumerism: Relocating Reproductive Labor in the Platform Economy.
Jussara Rowland (INESC-ID): Making Sense of Digital Identity: Data, Mediation, and the Construction of the Digital Self.

Chairs: Sunjin Oh (B’AI Global Forum, UTokyo) and Christiane Schäfer (CST, Uni Bonn)

January 8th Bias and Contextualization in LLMs

Sunjin Oh (B’AI Global Forum, UTokyo): Intersectional Bias Benchmarking in Japanese Large Language Models.
Kyungjoon Oh (HY Center of Ethics, Law, and Policy for Science and Technology, Hanyang University): tba
Nicholas Kluge Corrêa (CST, Uni Bonn): All Too Perfect: Bias and Aspiration in Persona Generation with LLMs.

Chair: Ai Hisano (B’AI Global Forum, UTokyo)

January 15th Ontologies

Prashant Kumar (CST, Uni Bonn): tba
Kat Köppert (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin): tba
Young Woo Kwon (Korea University): tba

Chairs: Christiane Schäfer und Lennard Landgraf (CST, Uni Bonn)

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 @）