2nd conference Norms in the Age of Intelligent Machines: Bodies, Knowledge, Governmentality, organized by Armen Khatchatourov and Shane Denson (Stanford), under France-Stanford Global Studies grant, will take place on 11-12 of May 2026, at CNAM, Amphi Jean Baptiste Say, 292 rue St-Martin, Paris (in English). Access is free.

This two-day conference is set up as 3 sessions with four speakers in each plus a round-table with shorter contributions. The detailed program with abstracts is forthcoming on April 22th, the argument and the list of confirmed speakers are below.

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.

Michele Elam (Stanford)
Xiaochang Li (Stanford)
Dan Zimmer (Stanford)
Warren Sack (UC Santa Cruz)
David Bates (UC Berkeley)
Johan Fredrikzon (KTH Sweden)
Noel Fitzpatrick (TU Dublin)
Jean Lassègue (EHESS/CNRS)
Antoine Garapon
Olivier Alexandre (CNRS / GDR-CIS)
Bilel Benbouzid (U. Gustave Eiffel)
Fanny Georges (Sorbonne Nouvelle)
Maryse Carmes (CNAM – DICEN)
Bernard Reber (CEVIPOF, SciencesPo)
Donato Ricci (MediaLab, Sciences Po)
Gabriel Alcaras (MediaLab, Sciences Po)
Frantz Rowe (IUF Chair holder & Nantes University)
Simon Dawes (UVSQ – Saclay)