Make it (net)work! - MLA2S Networking Seminar #06

Tuesday 23 Sept 2025, 13:00 → 17:00 Europe/Vienna

6th Network Seminar of the Thematic Platform MLA2S. 
Seminarrooms 1 and 2, PSK 3rd floor

Zoom Connection: [will be posted here on September 23]

To register: click "register" below here. 

13:00 → 13:30 News from MLA2S and Make it (net)work!

Including a short round table news update.

Speakers: Dr Claudius Krause (HEPHY Vienna (ÖAW)), Claus Trost (Erich Schmid Institute of Materials Science of theAustrian Academy of Sciences), Jan Odstrčilík (IMAFO), Kati Heinrich (IGF | ÖAW), Nicki Holighaus (Acoustics Research Institute, Austrian Academy of Sciences)

13:30 → 14:10 ML perspectives from ITA

14:10 → 14:20 Discussion

14:20 → 14:30 Break to walk a few steps and get some fresh air in.

14:30 → 15:10 Governing Machines: From Moderation to Alignment

This talk presents early work from the CMC research track "Platform Governance in the AI Era". Generative AI tools like ChatGPT are quickly changing the information ecosystem, echoing transformations brought about by social media. This talk compares two ways of managing risks: content moderation, which sets rules for what users can post online, and AI alignment, which sets rules for how AI systems themselves behave. Both are systems for deciding what is acceptable or harmful in digital spaces, but alignment goes further by governing the outputs of non-human actors. The talk discusses how challenges familiar from social media, like harmful content, cultural bias and reliance on hidden human labour, are now reappearing in AI. As such, it is not surprising that early initiatives to regulate AI are informed by paradigms from social media regulation. However, AI alignment poses novel challenges to these paradigms, specifically deep opacity and uncertain controllability. Ultimately, the question is not only how to prevent harm, but how to hold to account the normative assumptions embedded in systems.

Speaker: Charlotte Spencer-Smith (CMC)

15:10 → 15:20 Discussion

15:20 → 16:45 Networking with refreshments / further discussions