Call for papers: COMTECDEV Symposium - Artificial Intelligence and Social Innovation

Call for papers: COMTECDEV Symposium – Artificial Intelligence and Social Innovation

16 juin 2020

The COMTECDEV Colloquium – Artificial Intelligence and Social Innovation will be held from 27 May 2021 to 29 May 2021 in Bordeaux. A call for papers was launched this week in this context. The deadline for submitting proposals has been set at 30 July 2020.

Objectives of the conference

Culture, technological innovations, dissemination of knowledge; to these few themes of the French Institute’s Africa 2020 Season, the UNESCO Chair Emerging Practices in Technologies and Communication for Development (EPTCD) proposes to give a contemporary and anticipatory resonance through the symposium “Artificial Intelligence and Social Innovation”.

The subject, which extends the work of the Chair, would like to reintroduce the social dimension into the approach to an object for which the emphasis on technique has led to a neglect of the social, ethical, organizational, administrative and commercial aspects in its understanding, which are essential components for the flourishing of innovations of any kind.

Presentation

Artificial intelligence, like technology, “has reached such a point of evolution that it is transformed and progresses without decisive human intervention, by a kind of force that pushes it to growth, that leads it by necessity to incessant development” (Ellul, 1977, p. 274). It destabilizes social practices, but it also raises many hopes.

Indeed, “when a circumstance such as a technical change destabilizes the old balance of forces and representations, new strategies and unprecedented alliances become possible” (Lévy, 1990, p. 17). However, as the report Anticipating the Economic and Social Impacts of Artificial Intelligence points out, artificial intelligence first needs human intelligence (Hindi, Janin, 2017).

While there are many definitions of social innovation, we will retain the one that consists in considering it simply as “new ideas that work” (Mulgan et al., 2006, p. 9.) or even “new practices, procedures, rules, approaches or institutions introduced with a view to improving economic and social performance” (Harrisson, Vézina, 2006, p. 130). These would mainly involve new applications, practices and ways of doing things.

The notion of social innovation therefore refers to the role of the human being in this technological process, in the sense that the development of artificial intelligence is linked to an intervention initiated by social actors to respond to an aspiration, to meet a need, to provide a solution. As such, it contributes to the emergence of new models of development.

Indeed, artificial intelligence is no longer satisfied with satisfying market needs, it is increasingly addressing the resolution of ecological and social problems. It is also characterised by an implementation process involving cooperation between a variety of actors. It invests heavily in the field of citizen action (acts on inequalities, enables new forms of solidarity to be woven, increases the capacity of each individual to be able to act in the service of the general interest). From this point of view, it interferes in social relations (Granovetter, 1985) and its development is the result of a process of negotiation.

The conference “Artificial intelligence and social innovation” has set itself the following objectives:

to study how artificial intelligence is changing social practices;
to identify and analyze the practices of artificial intelligence by economic, public and civil actors;
to observe the processes of collective appropriation as well as the logics of cooperation that it gives rise to (creation of spaces for discussion, training, mediation, etc.);
to develop a critical approach to artificial intelligence and social innovation;
monitoring the evolution of innovation processes related to the use of algorithms ;
reveal the main challenges raised by artificial intelligence;
Understanding the barriers and incentives to the use of artificial intelligence in developing countries.

These problems can be approached through several axes:

IA, Culture, Creativity and Entrepreneurship
AI, Ethics, Values and Beliefs
AI and Sociability
AI and innovation…

The expected proposals should be able to answer, among other things, these questions:

To what extent does artificial intelligence make it possible to break with previous practices to meet the needs of populations?
To what extent does it change the relationship to the other?
What are the forms of co-learning, co-construction, co-production observed in the networks of artificial intelligence actors?
How do the public authorities, through their action of support or supervision of social innovation and artificial intelligence, participate in their dissemination, or even their institutionalization?
How are power relations between socio-economic actors affected by artificial intelligence?
How can artificial intelligence be a carrier of innovation in neighbourhoods, a vector for new projects and new services?
What new research questions can emerge from the study of so-called smart technologies?
To what extent does artificial intelligence promote the circular economy and/or the relocation of production and consumption?
How do the information and communication sciences in particular and the human and social sciences in general address this issue?

Practical details

Papers can be submitted in French, English or Spanish, in editable text format (doc, odt, rtf.).

Scientific guidelines: Focus on theoretical aspects, corpus, methodology, state of the art…

Receipt of proposals for papers (4000 characters, spaces included, map and bibliography not included + name and e-mail and postal addresses): 30 July 2020 at info@comtecdev.com.

Notification of acceptance: 10 September 2020.

Submission of complete texts (maximum 30,000 characters, including notes and spaces): 15 October 2020.

Selection procedure

Double-blind evaluation of proposals. Full texts will also be submitted for evaluation.

Registration Fees

Registration fees are 100 euros for teacher-researchers, 50 euros for doctoral and post-doctoral students. The Unesco Chair cannot pay for the travel and accommodation expenses of the communicators.

Publication in the proceedings is conditional on participation in the colloquium.

Publication

All the papers accepted by the selection committee will be published in the proceedings of the colloquium, if the final text is positively evaluated. Some articles will be published in a scientific journal.