Dear All,
Registrations are coming in for the four-day “Understanding and Deploying the Basics of Generative AI” workshop, which will be here on campus, hosted by the StFX Digital Humanities Centre. We are pleased to see, like past years, participants coming in from across Canada and internationally to attend this training opportunity.

The early bird deadline for registration is 1 March and registration is capped.

See below and at the linked site<https://www.stfx.ca/research/digital-humanities/dhsi-east> for details.
Laura and Margaret, on behalf of DHSI-Organizers





Dear All,



You are cordially invited to attend DHSI-East 2024, a four-day in-person workshop on “Understanding and Deploying the Basics of Generative AI,” led by Aaron Tucker (Toronto Metropolitan University) with Meghan Landry (ACENET), Adnane Ait-Nasser (ACENET), and Margaret Vail (St Francis Xavier University). This event will take place in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, at the St Francis Xavier University campus in Mi’kma’ki. All are welcome; please share with anyone who might be interested.



Workshop: Understanding and Deploying the Basics of Generative A.I.

Instructors:
Aaron Tucker, Toronto Metropolitan University
with Meghan Landry, ACENET, Adnane Ait-Nasser, ACENET, and Margaret Vail, St. Francis Xavier University

Date: Monday, April 29 to Thursday, May 2, 2024

Location: St. Francis Xavier University, Antigonish, Nova Scotia
This four-day workshop (9AM-4PM) will outline the basics of contemporary machine learning to illustrate how Generative A.I., such as the text-based ChatGPT and the image-based DALL-E operate. This accessible technical description will be combined with critical readings from science and technology studies, critical digital studies, media studies, and digital humanities that interrogate A.I. from critical race, post-colonial, and feminist perspectives. This knowledge is not necessarily intended to make participants “experts” on the topics, but rather have scholars reflect on how such technologies can add further depth to their own research and provide them vocabulary and expertise to be able to collaborate with scholars who specialize in the technical elements of A.I. At the end of the workshop participants will synthesize these demonstrations and readings, alongside class discussions, and produce the outline for a future research paper and/or research creation project involving machine learning and/or Generative A.I.; instructors will provide one-on-one feedback and trouble-shooting on these projects over the four days.

Keynote Lecture: Mecha is not Orga: The Fiction of AI and the AI Industry

Dr. Teresa Heffernan (St Mary’s University)



This talk considers the fictional roots of recent claims of AI as an existential risk that have been making headline news. Dating back to Alan Turing, literal readings of fiction, including the threat of superintelligent machines taking control of the world, have long shaped the AI industry. With no basis in science, I argue that this irrational anxiety serves not only as a distraction but as an unconscious defense as it substitutes a new object, autonomous machines, in place of one that cannot be acknowledged, the environmental and societal damage caused by a resource-intensive industry heavily invested in a mechanistic worldview that treats nature, including humans, as a lucrative commodity. The second part of the talk, traces two of Stanley Kubrick’s film projects and their shifting understanding of this technology. If 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) takes seriously intelligent enigmatic evolving machines, A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001) recounts a dark corporate fairy tale about the production of mechanical androids (mecha) that persists despite the climate crisis.



For more information and to register, please visit: https://dhsi-east.stfx.ca<https://dhsi-east.stfx.ca/>



DHSI-East is part of the international DH Training Network<https://dhsi.org/dh-training-network/> and takes its name from DHSI<https://dhsi.org/>, the Digital Humanities Summer Institute (University of Victoria).  DHSI-East is part of the Canadian Certificate for Digital Humanities/Certificat canadien en Humanités Numériques (cc:DH/HN)<https://ccdhhn.ca/>.



This event is hosted by the StFX Digital Humanities Centre.



Questions? Contact us at [log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>



Hope to see you there!



Margaret, on behalf of the DHSI-East organizing team

Laura Estill (English, StFX), Margaret Vail (StFX Library), Richard Cunningham (Acadia University), and Meghan Landry (ACENET)



MARGARET VAIL MLIS, BCSc (she/her/hers)
SYSTEMS AND DATA SERVICES LIBRARIAN
Angus L. Macdonald Library
St. Francis Xavier University
Antigonish, Nova Scotia · Canada
T 902 867 4869
[log in to unmask]<mailto:[log in to unmask]>

Liaison Librarian for:
Business | Chemistry | Computer Science | Data | Engineering | Math & Stats | Physics

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I acknowledge that StFX is located in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.