4H-Technoexistence is a unique research network hosted by the Uppsala Hub for Digital Existence, formed in order to provide a meeting spot for formulating highly relevant new research projects that will 1) provide essential, long-term interdisciplinary humanistic and creative engagement with an urgent issue for our time: the forms and fates of the human register in light of dramatic technological change; and to 2) remedy the lack of humanistically and artistically conceived research on advanced technologies and automation.
This newly summoned network reconsiders the call for “human-centric AI” as a call for a state-of-the-art humanistic approach to automation. Rooted in the young field of existential media studies, its purpose is to collaboratively explore and critically identify how to rehumanize technology, by raising a twofold question: 1) How is being human currently under re-negotiation due to the developments of AI and 2) what aspects of the human register are at stake, in need of being safeguarded, or are possibly undergoing beneficial transformations?
Our network monitors, probes, and practically and creatively intervenes, in what we coin the 4H of the Human Register by answering four sub-questions:
(1) How are human (socio-technical) imaginaries and worldviews (re)forged in the age of AI? (Head):
(2) How are boundaries between embodied humans and machines renegotiated in the era of generative models, social robots, and simulation? (Heart):
(3) In a world in which machines reproduce, reinforce and create bias and power asymmetries, how can recognizing differences generate healthy and just worlds of AI? (Health):
(4) As AI intervenes in classic human fields of the imagination and art, what roles may human creativity and hands-on material practices play in crafting a sustainable world of technology? (Hand).
