Philosophy of Technology and AI. Traditions, Transitions, and Tensions.
A conference exploring how different ‘schools’ of philosophy of technology interpret and respond to Artificial Intelligence.
Philosophy of technology has developed through a plurality of traditions that reflect on téchne, technics, technological change, and the role of technology in shaping knowledge, human being and social praxis and relations. Artificial Intelligence has recently become one of the most prominent technological developments engaging these traditions. Rather than constituting an entirely new philosophical field, AI enters an already rich landscape of techno-philosophical thought.
The conference Philosophy of Technology and AI: Traditions, Transitions, and Tensions invites contributions that approach Artificial Intelligence from within the philosophy of technology and reflect on how AI reopens fundamental questions of technics and technology across different traditions, conceptual transitions, and philosophical tensions.
The title highlights three interconnected dimensions of this encounter:
Traditions refer to the diverse schools and lineages within the philosophy of technology that provide conceptual frameworks for interpreting technological developments. These traditions often crystallize around influential authors, methodological approaches, or intellectual constellations within particular philosophical or regional contexts. Whether emerging from phenomenological, ontological, critical, feminist, media-philosophical, pragmatist, or science and technology studies approaches, they offer distinct ways of understanding technology.
Transitions refer to the conceptual and technological shifts associated with AI. Developments such as machine learning, generative models, and large-scale computational infrastructures invite reconsideration of established techno-philosophical concepts and raise questions about how existing philosophical frameworks respond to new technological configurations.
Tensions refer to the conceptual, methodological, and normative disagreements that arise within the philosophy of technology when interpreting AI. Within the philosophy of technology, AI intersects with diverse philosophical problem horizons, including ontological questions of technics and being, theories of human–technology relations, reflections on human activity, labor, and automation as well as approaches that situate technics within broader ecological, natural, or systemic contexts. These differing conceptual starting points shape how AI is interpreted and debated.
The conference aims to bring these techno-philosophical perspectives into dialogue and to explore how AI can be interpreted within, across, and between traditions of the philosophy of technology.
Stay updated via our website.
Registration and Date
Time and Place
Place
Date
November 4-6, 2026
Registration
Registration is possible on the Desirable AI website:
Schedule
9:00-9:30 Arrival and Registration
9:30-10:00 Opening Remarks
10:00-11:00 Keynote: Federica Buongiorno
The Governance of Technological Uncertainty: Predicting Disasters and the Neoliberal Logic of Anticipation.
11:00-11:15 Short Break
11:15-12:45 Panel 1: What is AI?
- Oskar Galeev: God in the Machine: The Genealogy of AGI as a Unified Imaginary.
- Diana Lengua: AI as a Site of Comparative Technogenesis.
- Kenneth Howart: From Tool to Milieu: Artificial Intelligence and the Re-Bearing of Human-Technics Relations.
12:45-14:00 Lunch Break
14:00-15:30 Panel 2: Cognition, Consciousness, Meaning
- Jana Baum: Data Processing as Myth of the Given.
- Claudia Montanaro: The Meanings of 'Meaning' in LLM Research: How Polysemy Does Theoretical Work in Capability Debates across Disciplines.
- Sofía Alcaine: A Hermeneutic Study of LLMs as Interlocutors.
15:30-15:45 Short Break
15:45-17:15 Panel 3: Phenomenological Perspectives
- Mustapha el Moussaoui: The Spectacle Undoing Itself: AI, Deepfakes, and the Return to the Things Themselves.
- Gina Negelmann: Alchemy and AI Alignment. A Phenomenological Critique of the New Specification Game.
- Thomas Schimmer: A Return to Doxa? Phenomenological Reflections on AI as a Scientific Tool.
10:00-11:00 Keynote: Toni Loh
Feminist Philosophy of Technology and AI: A Critical Overview.
11:00-11:15 Short Break
11:15-12:45 Panel 4: Feminist/Critique
- Dominika Lisy: New Materialist Theory on Boundaries with Social Robots.
- Ninell Oldenburg: Beyond Isolated Critiques: Feminist Epistemology as a Lens for the Philosophy of AI.
- Anja Salzmann / Paul Prinsloo: A Critique of AI as/and Progress: Towards an Ethics of/for Squashed Birds.
12:45-14:00 Lunch Break
14:00-15:30 Panel 5: On Hybridization
- Ido Ramati: AI Revoiced the Radio Star: The Thirdness of Machine-Generated Vocality.
- Sebastian Lederle: AI and the Technisation of the Human: Rereading Hans Blumenberg.
- Floriana Ferro: Humanoid Robots and Distributed Agency: A Phenomenological Posthuman Perspective.
15:30-15:45 Short Break
15:45-17:15 Panel 6: Signs, Simulacra, Simulation
- Hannah Peuker: Accessing the Real through Simulation: Techno-Philosophical Perspectives on Generative World Models.
- Ivanna Gladysh: Simulacral Distance: A Computational Operationalisation of Baudrillard’s Theory of Simulacra as a Semantic Authenticity Metric for Generative AI.
- Jakub Mácha: Sign First, Truth Lost: Structuralism and the Limits of LLMs.
9:30-11:00 Panel 7: Along with Simondon, Stiegler, And Pharmakon
- Carl Weckerling: Beyond the Simulator: Individuation, Red-Teaming, and the Ontology of LLM Personae.
- Adam Knowles: Inside the Forgetting Machine: Towards a Post-Pharmakon Ethics of AI.
- Allister Lee: Can the Failures of AI Help Us Become Better Epistemic Agents? A Pharmacological Analysis.
11:00-11:15 Short Break
11:15-12:45 Panel 8: Revisiting Philosophical Foundations
- Tim Christiaens: Imagining Communist AI with Karl Marx.
- Massimiliano Simons: The Computer as the Absolute Spirit: Dutch Hegelian Philosophy of Technology (1960–2000).
- Adam Takács: Artificial Intelligence and the Reordering of Knowledge: A Foucauldian Approach.
12:45-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:30 Keynote: David J. Gunkel
The Différance Engine: Large Language Models and Deconstruction.
15:30 Outro
Desirable Digitalisation: Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures
Our research program is a collaboration between the Universities of Cambridge and Bonn and numerous international partners, and is funded by the Mercator Foundation in Germany.
We investigate how to design AI (artificial intelligence) and other digital technologies in a responsible way, placing the questions of social justice and environmental sustainability at the very heart of our work.
Contact and Organisation
Jurgita Imbrasaite
Konrad-Zuse-Platz 1-3
53227 Bonn