Networked bodies, AI, and our future digital lives

Big Thinking with Dr. Isabel Pedersen

Networked bodies, AI, and our future digital lives

Will bodies become computer platforms? Disruptive embodied computing technology is being proposed, and it will change how people live in vastly different ways in our evolving post-Internet society. The idea of a thoroughly quantified, remotely monitored networked body is propelling discussions of personal privacy, human agency, creativity, consent, social connection, cultural values, and ethics. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is seeping into all computing paradigms. As a consequence, AI also operates as an ideology, a belief system. This talk raises questions about early-phase embodied technologies and the unintended consequences that may result in the future.

Dr. Isabel Pedersen is Canada Research Chair in Digital Life, Media and Culture and Associate Professor at Ontario Tech University. She is co-editor of Embodied Computing: Wearables, Implantables, Embeddables, Ingestibles, a collection released in spring 2020 by MIT Press. As a humanities researcher, Pedersen explores how technology is invented and adopted; she takes a human-centric approach to understand the impact on life, culture, politics, art, ethics and social practices. She was inducted into The Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists in 2014.