Stanford & DICEN Conference: Norms in the Age of AI

On May 11 and 12, a second conference Norms in the Age of Intelligent Machines: Bodies, Knowledge, Governmentality, organized by Armen Khatchatourov (DICEN-UGE) and Shane Denson (Stanford), under France-Stanford Global Studies grant, will take place at CNAM, 292 rue St-Martin, Paris. Access is free.

The prospect of intelligent machines challenges our societal norms. Matters of debate over the past half century concerning digital networks – e.g. access, privacy, subjectivity, participation – must be reconsidered in the age of machine learning. More specifically, the proliferation of AI-based systems leads to new ways of understanding what normativity is. Social norms don’t change overnight; however, the mechanisms and processes that drive these changes are increasingly influenced by AI-based infrastructures, characterized by a heightened level of automation, while being opaque, inscrutable, and anthropomorphic.

Faced with such conditions, we have to ask, first, what it means to instill or break a norm and, second, what norms even mean or represent. This landscape presents both profound challenges to maintain just and stable means of interaction and, at the same time, novel and creative opportunities for alternative modes of being.

The question of AI normativity is not only about regulation, not only about AI amplification of existing norms or discrimination, not only about fairness, but about how the AI transforms our very relation to the norms, or even about what a “norm” could mean in the AI conditions of perpetual adjustment of all forms of social interactions.

The two conferences (December 4-5, 2025 at Stanford, May 11-12 2026 in Paris) will address the imbrication of two movements: how the evolution of social norms is reflected in new algorithmic practices, and how these algorithms influence social norms in various domains. It will also investigate the intricate relation between the rise of AI and the (post-)neo-liberalism.

It will bring together the humanities, social sciences, and STS to address issues of crucial contemporary importance.

The detailed Paris program with abstracts can be found here.

Day 1
Doors open 9:45
Introduction 10:00
Session 1 10:15 – 13:00 (4x 25 minutes + discussion)
Session 2 14:30 – 17:00 (4x 25 minutes + discussion)

Day 2
Session 3 10:00 12:45 (4x 25 minutes + discussion)
Roundtable 14:30 17:00

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Day 1 Morning
Practices, collectives, mediations
Michele Elam (Stanford) : Slow AI: Keeping Time in the Time of AI
Donato Ricci & Gabriel Alcaras (Medialab Sciences Po), Disqualifying Actions: Working with Artificial Intelligence within Professional Norms
Bilel Benbouzid (Eiffel) : Generative AI and the Student Role: An Ethnomethodological Analysis of Accountability Regimes
Johan Fredrikzon (KTH Sweden), Human as Medium: Caring for Machines in the Age of AI

Day 1 Afternoon
Afternoon Pasts, futures, processes
Xiaochang Li (Stanford) : Historicizing AI Norms from the Body to the Black Box
Fanny Georges, Sorbonne Nouvelle, IRMECCEN-DICEN : The normative turn of Algorithmic Identity: Sociotechnological myths and the Calculated Self
Noel Fitzpatrick (TU Dublin) : Idioms, language norms and information.
Warren Sack (University California Santa Cruz) Signs Taken for Wonders: Artificial Intelligence Demos Between the Real and the Imaginary

Day 2 Morning
Morning Norms, spaces, risks
David Bates (UC Berkeley), Between Facts and Norms in the Age of AI: From Instrumental Reason to the Habermas Machine
Dan Zimmer (Stanford) : Meat Humans, Mind Children, and the Norms of AI Supersession
Armen Khatchatourov (Eiffel-DICEN) A Heuristic Approach to Post-neolibral AI Normativity: from optimization to rewardization.
Antoine Garapon (judge emeritus) & Jean Lassègue (CNRS/EHESS), The politics of platforms: sovereignty grounded in space versus sovereignty grounded in code

Day 2 Afternoon
Roundtable on Beliefs, Platforms, Governance
Olivier Alexandre, (GRD-CIS – CNRS)
Maryse Carmes (DICEN – CNAM)
Stéphan-Eloïse Gras (DICEN – CNAM)
Bernard Reber (CEVIPOF – Sciences Po)
Frantz Rowe (IUF – Nantes University)

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Supporters: 
France-Stanford Global Studies
The CNAM
GP DIGIS, Graduate Program Digital Studies and Innovation for Smart Cities, Gustave Eiffel
Internet and Society Centre: GDR-CIS, CNRS
Digital Studies Review