Is The Web Eating Itself? Futures Of The Internet In The Wake Of Generative AI

Abstract: The aim of this talk is to examine our current moment in the history of the web as the moment in which the struggle to dominate the interface is heating up in distinct ways. A decade from now, will we still be browsing the internet by visiting multiple sites? Or will we encounter the internet via our own personal chatbot that is embedded in a smart speaker or cloud-connected screen? What will this mean for the diversity of voices that the Web has, so far, enabled? In order to understand this moment, I discuss the case of Wikipedia, one of the premier sources of data for third party interfaces like ChatGPT, Amazon Alexa and Google Bard. Wikipedians have been generally optimistic in the face of what some see as an existential threat to their continued relevance. Are Wikipedians sleepwalking to their death? Or do they know something that other producers should know about the future of the Web?

Bio: Dr Heather Ford is an Associate Professor in the School of Communications, the Coordinator of the UTS (University of Technology Sydney) Data and AI Ethics Cluster, Affiliate of the UTS Data Science Institute, and Associate of the UTS Centre for Media Transition. She was appointed to the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) in 2023 and is currently conducting research funded by the Australian Research Council and the Wikimedia Foundation on Wikipedia bias, question and answering technologies, digital literacy and the impact of generative AI on our information environment. She has a background working for global technology corporations and non-profits in the US, UK, South Africa and Kenya. A former Google Policy Fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, former Executive Director of iCommons and co-founder of Creative Commons South Africa, her research focuses on the social implications of media technologies and the ways in which they might be better designed to prevent misinformation, social exclusion, and harms as a result of algorithmic bias. 

Pizza will be provided.

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