This contribution will first examine the way in which the notion of context plays a central role in the history of the informatics and ubiquitous AI on the one hand, and in that of privacy and data protection on the other; and, second, will examine the way in which this notion replays the conception of subjectivity, normativity and ethics. We will show how this evolution parallels the establishment of neoliberal – and more recently algorithmic – governmentality, and how it confronts us not only to the ethical but also to the political significance of ubiquitous AI. Our approach aims to make two contributions: a complementary proposal for the classification of AI, based on the evolving role that context plays in user’s action and ethos; and a renewed heuristic to grasp the articulation between the operationalisation of AI systems and the preservation of informational autodetermination or, in other words, between technical efficiency and social normativity.

Armen Khatchatourov is Associate Professor of Information and Communication Sciences at DICEN-IdF Lab, University Gustave Eiffel, Paris, France. He has a double background (engineering degree and PhD in philosophy of technology) and has previously worked as Senior Researcher at Institut Mines-Télécom; as HMI-AI Associate Researcher at Sony Computer Science Lab Paris; as HMI Researcher at Institut National Polytechnique de Grenoble as well as at the Institute of Research and Innovation/Centre Pompidou. He has also taught at University of Technology of Compiègne, Ecole des Ponts, Paris 1 – Sorbonne as well as in art and design schools (EESI, Strate, ENSAM). His research interests include digital identities, privacy and data protection, smart-cities and more generally the effects of Big Data an AI on the society and governance.

He has published Digital Identities in Tension: Between Autonomy and Control (ISTE/Wiley, 2019) and directed Corps Connectés. Figures, fragments, discours (Presses des Mines, 2022) and he is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal Etudes Digitales .

A workshop for graduate students will follow on Tuesday, February 4 from 2-4pm in 7415 Dwinelle. 

Suggested Readings (contact David Bates dwbates@berkeley.edu for access).

Foucault, M., (2008). The birth of biopolitics : lectures at the Collège de France, 1978-1979 (1st Picador pbk ed). Picador. (In particular Lecture 10)

Dourish, Paul. “What We Talk about When We Talk about Context.” Personal and Ubiquitous Computing 8.1 (2004): 19–30.

Khatchatourov, A., (2019). Digital identities in tension : between autonomy and control . ISTE, Ltd. ; John Wiley & Sons, Inc. See the dedicated chapter, pp 77 – 92.

Please view the original French copy of the paper which will be presented.

Helen Nissenbaum, Symposium, Privacy as Contextual Integrity, 79 Wash. L. Rev . 119 (2004).

Rouvroy, A., Berns, T., Translated by Carey-Libbrecht, L. (2013) . Algorithmic governmentality and prospects of emancipation Disparateness as a precondition for individuation through relationships? Réseaux , No 177(1), 163-196.