On Friday, March 14, Sam Hind (Manchester University) will join us for a NICA Masterclass on “Eyes on the Prize: Studying Competitions in AI”.
In this masterclass, we will examine the growing phenomenon of machine vision ‘challenges’, used in big tech to drive innovations in AI and machine learning (ML). Competitions and prizes have long been used to stimulate scientific and technological discoveries – The British Longitude Prize was launched in 1714 to find an accurate method for determining longitude on the high seas. More recently, the Netflix Prize (2006), DARPA Grand/Urban Challenges (2005-2007), and Manchester Prize (2023) have attempted to drive innovations in algorithmic, autonomous, and AI systems. Across these examples and more, different kinds of collaborative play are seemingly integral to the (competitive) development practices of computer scientists and AI practitioners. The workshop will seek to make sense of this ostensibly ‘technical’ work underpinning machine vision cultures by following three lines of enquiry: firstly, how have challenges been used historically to drive the advancement of AI and machine vision? Secondly, how has the ‘platformization’ of AI and machine vision challenges transformed their organization? Then lastly, how is technical work conducted for AI and machine vision challenges, and how is innovation success ultimately judged in such competitions? Answers to each of these questions, in part, rely on forms of methodological experimentation that draw from work across media studies and science and technology studies (STS) on technological innovation, value and valuation, digital platforms, and machine learning practices.
Readings:
Hind, S., van der Vlist, F. N. and Kanderske, M. (2024). Challenges as catalysts: How Waymo’s Open Dataset Challenges shape AI development. AI & Society 0 (0): 1-17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00146-024-01927-x
Orr, W. and Kang, E. B. (2024). AI as a sport: On the competitive epistemologies of benchmarking. FAccT ’24: Proceedings of the 2024 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency 1875-1884. https://doi.org/10.1145/3630106.3659012
You can download the readings via the shared folder here.
Credits
1 ECTS – reading preparation, attendance and active participation in the discussions
The session takes place on Friday 14 March 2025, 10.00-12.00 in room 0.16 (E-lab), Turfdraagsterpad 9, Amsterdam. For more information and registration, please contact Linda Kopitz (l.kopitz@uva.nl). Following the Masterclass, Sam Hind will also give a guest lecture as part of the ASCA Cities Seminar on “Playable Cities”.
Sam Hind is lecturer in digital media and culture at the University of Manchester, UK. His current research interests include machine vision challenges, autonomous driving, the history of computer simulation, and the platformization of automobility. He recently published Driving Decisions: How Autonomous Vehicles Make Sense of the World (Palgrave).