Lecturer: Stephane Baele
Fields: AI, Political Science, Social Theory, History
Content
This course proposes to hit, for 270 minutes, the “pause” button in the relentless, high-paced development of Artificial Intelligence, to critically think of the political underpinnings and implications of the technology.
Specifically, it seeks to highlight the profound connection between (any) technology and power in order to unpack the various ways through which progress in AI cannot be separated from social and political hierarchies, state power and its often violent contestations, individual freedoms, and the international system.
The three sessions of the course explore this issue by unearthing what we could imagine as the three layers of the power/technology relationship (as applied to AI), from the most superficial to the most fundamental. First, we reflect on the issue – and very idea of – AI (and other technologies) “dual-uses”, using the case of extremist and terrorist uses of AI as a case-study. Second, this allows us to problematise, from various historical perspectives, the strengthening or weakening of state power in the AI “revolution”. Finally, we leverage a couple of classic social theory frameworks to interrogate the very nature and position of technique in society and how AI merely represents the latest stage of a much larger current of modernity.
Session 1: The problem with AI “dual-uses”: AI terrorism and extremism.
Session 2: AI, technology, and state power: A historical perspective.
Session 3: Questioning technique, progress, and power at the age of the AI “revolution”.
Literature
- Baele S. (2026) Generative Artificial Intelligence. In Lakhani S., Macdonald S., Droogan J., Khalil L. (eds.) Routledge Handbook of Online Violent Extremism. London: Routledge.
- Baele S., Brace L. (2024) AI Extremism. Technologies, Tactics, Actors. Dublin: VOX-Pol.
- Giattino C., Mathieu E., Samborska V., Roser M. (2023) Artificial Intelligence, OurWorldInData.org.
- Ellul J. (964) The Technological Society. New York: Vintage Books.
- Headrick D. (2009) Technology: A World History. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Hegghammer T. (2021) Resistance Is Futile. The War on Terror Supercharged State Power. Foreign Affairs 100(5): pp.44-53.
- Rassler D., Veilleux-Lepage Y. (2024) The Paradox of Progress: How ‘Disruptive,’ ‘Dual-use,’ ‘Democratized,’ and ‘Diffused’ Technologies Shape Terrorist Innovation. Zeitschrift für Technikfolgenabschätzung in Theorie und Praxis 33(2): 22-28.
- Tilly C. (1990) Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990-1990. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Lecturer
Stephane J. Baele is Professor of International Studies at UCLouvain, Belgium, and Honorary Associate Professor in Security and Political Violence at the University of Exeter, UK. He has written extensively on extremist and violent political actors\’ communications, using in-depth empirical analysis of cases ranging from Islamic State\’s propaganda to white supremacists\’ online forums to offer novel perspectives on radicalization, digital extremism, and linguistic and visual expressions and drivers of violence. Besides academia, he regularly supports counter-terrorism/extremism agencies in various ways and loves to run on wild trails.
Affiliation: UCLouvain