Social and Labour History News

Organizer: Desirable AI, Center for Science and Thought, Universität Bonn Funded by: Stiftung Mercator Postcode: 53113 Location: Bonn Country: Germany Takes place: In person Dates: 18.05.2026 - 20.05.2026 Deadline: 01.12.2025 Website: https://www.desirableai.com/news/call-for-papers-irrationality-and-the-age-of-ai  

As part of the Desirable AI programme – a collaboration between Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn and the University of Cambridge – this interdisciplinary conference, will explore the profound implications of large language models (LLMs), affective computing, and emotionally responsive AI. As machines venture into realms once thought uniquely human – emotion, creativity, irrationality – we ask: What does this mean for language, ethics, and the future of human expression?

 

Irrationality and the Age of AI: Language, Ethics, and the Future of Human Expression

The AI revolution has accelerated in recent years, propelled by the widespread use of large language models (LLMs). Today, AI systems are not only transforming technical environments but also shaping our thoughts, emotions, and everyday linguistic practices. Increasingly, AI research and industry are shifting their attention from rational problem-solving toward aspects of human life once considered the last bastions of humanity. We can contrast this approach to AI as a simulation of ‘rationality’ with the expansion of applications into the realm of the expression of emotions and other aspects of human life often seen as ‘irrational’.

Our conference will explore the role of affective computing, emotionally laden human-machine interaction, conversational AI models, reinforcement algorithms, and recommender systems in the wake of the LLM revolution. In this light, we will discuss what we can learn about language—both in its explicit, logical, grammatical structure and in its emotional, expressive dimension—when AI accesses these depths of human expression. We also ask what it means for humanity when even the ‘irrational’ aspects of life are no longer beyond the reach of digitalization. This raises the important question of how emotions and their various forms of bodily and linguistic expression are related and what it means for AI to detect and mass reproduce patterns in human behavior that are closely correlated with the emotional depth dimension of human life.

We will address a paradox of technological progress: the deeper AI mirrors the structural layers of the human mind through interdisciplinary breakthroughs, the more actually existing human irrationality becomes visible as social and political collateral damage. Simulating this irrationality, in turn, provides AI with new behavioral data, generating a non-rational feedback loop alongside the rational one—bringing both novel opportunities and risks.

These developments have profound normative consequences for social, political, and ethical thought and action. They raise urgent questions about the design of ethical AI that goes beyond regulatory compliance. Addressing these questions requires us to account for the transcultural differences that shape AI as a sociotechnological phenomenon. To this end, the conference will convene interdisciplinary expertise, industry perspectives, practical approaches, policy insights, and fundamental reflections in AI politics, ethics and philosophy. Our discussions will highlight technical dimensions of AI, its impact on human experience, culture, and society, and the philosophical, ethical, and normative frameworks for shaping desirable futures.

We welcome theoretical, empirical, and practice-oriented contributions from scholars, practitioners, and policymakers across disciplines, including computer science, linguistics, philosophy, ethics, psychology, sociology, political science, and cultural studies. Possible areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

Human Experience, Culture, and Society

- AI, Culture, and Society
Transcultural perspectives on emotional human–machine interaction; emotional feedback loops in algorithmic decision-making; behavioral steering and impacts on identity, language, and social cohesion, feminist and intersectional critiques of technology and power dynamics in AI research and application.

- Affect and Aesthetics in the AI Age
Advances in emotion recognition and sentiment analysis; the role of embodied cognition in human–AI interaction; artistic, emotional, and aesthetic dimensions of AI systems; transformations of creativity, expression, and perception in human–AI interaction.

- Linguistics and Large Language Models
Insights into grammar, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse through large-scale models; implications for theories of language and meaning.

Philosophical, Ethical, and Normative Frameworks

- Philosophy of Mind and AI
Insights from AI research into consciousness, intentionality, and emotion.

- Ethical and Normative Frameworks for AI
Cultural, philosophical, and policy approaches to ethical AI design and deployment, (social) risk and governance challenges in emotionally intelligent AI systems.

- Sustainable AI (ecological and social dimensions)
Environmental costs of AI development and deployment; social sustainability in data practices, labor conditions, and long-term technological responsibility.

Submission Guidelines
We invite individual proposals for 20-minute presentations (followed by Q&A) or collective proposals for 2h panels that address one or more of the above themes.

We accept proposals for traditional academic presentations, as well as project/product demonstrations and artistic interventions. We are looking for contributions from established academics, early career researchers, policy specialists, civil society organisations, as well as communicators and artists.

Accepted speakers will be considered for travel and accommodation funding.
We particularly encourage submissions for interdisciplinary papers as well as submissions from scholars and practitioners from the Majority World.

Submissions should include:
- A title
- Half-page abstract per talk (approx. 250–300 words) outlining the proposed topic, methodology, and its relevance to the theme of the conference
- A brief biographical note (max. 100 words)

Deadline for Abstract Submission: December 01, 2025
Please submit your abstracts here.

Contact and Updates
For questions or further information, please contact: desirableai@gmail.com

Kontakt

desirableai@gmail.com

Agents of change: Folk cultures in the long 20th century

Folk art and cultures have often been seen as passive, unchanging, and frozen in a preindustrial era, linked with ideas such as nostalgia, decoration, and kitsch. From this point of view, grounded in late 19th and early 20th-century nationalist and modernist discourses, folk art seems to be a relic of the past that cannot respond to the challenges of modern societies, let alone contribute to social change.

There is another perspective – one that, admittedly, has received much less attention: numerous publications, exhibitions, institutions, and movements around the globe have recognised folk art as a continuous and contemporary practice with the potential to emancipate and activate individuals and groups. Ranging from projects dedicated to wellbeing and mental health to activist interventions from all sides of the political spectrum, folk art is connected to class, gender, and ethnic divisions, regional and national identities, as well as decolonial and economic emancipation. Far removed from the limiting associations with preindustrial traditionalism and decorativeness, it instead can be understood as an agent of change in both past and contemporary practices.

The workshop turns attention to folk craftspeople and artisans that have actively engaged with social upheavals, market shifts, government policies, and technological advances around the globe from the late 19th century to the present. Building on the idea of agency in folk art, the workshop welcomes papers that offer new perspectives on the meanings of folk art throughout the long 20th century in various geographical and political contexts. With the goal of developing new theoretical frameworks for the study of folk art across disciplines, the workshop seeks to open a long-overdue debate about the role of folk art in contributing to political, social, and economic change during the long 20th century. It asks:

How do folk cultures interact with politics and ideologies through specific actors, from the extreme right to alternative subcultures, from conformity to resistance?
How does folk art serve as a tool for emancipation and oppression?
How and why does folk art enter the market? What roles do commercialisation, tourism, and souvenir culture play in its formation?
How was folk art presented, exhibited and collected? How was folk creativity institutionalised?
What are the ecological dimensions of folk art and material culture?

The workshop is part of "Beyond the Village. Folk Cultures as Agents of Modernity, 1918-1945," a project funded by the Czech Science Foundation (GAČR).

We invite scholars from various fields engaged with the topics of folk creativity, folk art and material culture to submit proposals (up to 300 words) for 20-minute papers, accompanied by a brief CV.

Please send the proposals to folkandchange@gmail.com by 19 December 2025.

Notification of acceptance of proposals will be issued by the end of January 2026.

For enquiries, please feel free to contact the members of the project team:
Marta Filipová m.filipova@phil.muni.cz
Julia Secklehner secklehner@phil.muni.cz
Valéria Bláha valeria.krsiakova@mail.muni.cz