20.11.2025 - 21.11.2025
Weizenbaum-Institut, Hardenbergstraße 32, 10623 Berlin
Generative AI & The Faces of Power
The workshop addresses the question of how to conceptualize the power relations associated with Generative Artificial Intelligence. It will be accompanied by a public keynote speech by Rainer Mühlhoff (Osnabrück University).
Program
20 November 2025
| 15:00-17:00 | Panel 1: De/Stabilisation of (Algorithmic) Knowledge (Chair: Ann-Kathrin Koster) |
| Niclas Rautenberg (University of Hamburg): Artificial Intelligence, Calculative Reason, and Technical Domination: Lessons from Husserl, Heidegger, and Marcuse | |
| Anna Lena Menne (Paderborn University): Cracks in the Loop – Stabilization, Recomposition, and the Ambivalence of Rupture in LLM-Mediated Interaction | |
| Paola Lopez (University of Bremen): The Crude Power of Defining Truth in Large Language Models | |
| Anthony Obst (Freie Universität Berlin): ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ in the Mythological Machine: AI Slop and Right-Wing Culture | |
| 18:30-20:00 | Keynote (public): Rainer Mühlhoff (University of Osnabrück): The Power of AI: From Tech Ideologies to New Authoritarianisms |
Please register for the public keynote here.
21 November 2025
| 9:00-10:30 | Panel 2: Disputing Power (Chair: Florian Irgmaier & Clara Iglesias Keller) |
| Sandra Sieron (WZB Berlin Social Science Center & Humboldt University Berlin): Falling Ahead? Governing the Modern Nation State Amidst the ‘AI Race’ | |
| Mariana Valente (University of St. Gallen & InternetLab, Brazil): Redistributing Power Over Creative Agency in GenAI | |
| Hannah Friedrich (University of Freiburg): How Feminist Theory Helps Analyse the Power Behind AI’s Influence on Societies | |
| 11:00-13:00 | Panel 3: Relationality in (Algorithmic) Authority (Chair: Jana Heim) |
| Clara Riedenstein (University of Oxford & Center for European Policy Analysis): Ask the Expert: Generative AI and the Changing Face of Authority | |
| Kostina Prifti (Erasmus School of Law Rotterdam & Centre of Excellence on Digital Governance): Generative AI in Healthcare: Situating Algorithmic Authority within Epistemic and Institutional Power Regimes | |
| Mariana Schütt (Friedrich Schiller University Jena): Mimetic Machines: Generative AI, Fictional Empathy, and the Faces of Power | |
| Stefan Schönwetter & Celestine Kleinesper (Deutsche Kinder- & Jugendstiftung): Wohin mit dem ganzen Segen? – Algorithmische Autorität, Sprache und epistemische (Un-)Gerechtigkeit im Schulkontext | |
| 14:00-15:30 | Panel 4: Inequality and Marginalisation (Chair: Sebastian Berg) |
| Paula Muhr (Brand University of Applied Sciences, Hamburg), Charlotte Tumescheit (University of Zurich), Janna Hastings (University of Zurich) & Lucas Caluori (University of Hamburg): Intersecting Powers of AI-Generated Body Images: Insidious Influence, Normative Beauty, and Epistemic Exclusion | |
| Vinit Ravishankar (University of Copenhagen): Domination, Expropriation, and AI Infrastructure Expansion | |
| Ömer Faruk Kulak (Kadir Has University Istanbul & Istanbul Policy Center): Who Gets to Generate? Generative AI and the Reproduction of Epistemic Inequality |