At the Edge of AI: Human Computation Systems and Their Intraverting Relations

How are human computation systems developed in the field of citizen science to achieve what neither humans nor computers can alone? Through multiple perspectives and methods, Libuse Hannah Veprek examines the imagination of these assemblages, their creation, and everyday negotiation in the interplay of various actors and play/science entanglements at the edge of AI. Focusing on their human-technology relations, this ethnographic study shows how these formations are marked by intraversions, as they change with technological advancements and the actors’ goals, motivations, and practices. This work contributes to the constructive and critical ethnographic engagement with human-AI assemblages in the making.

Libuse Hannah Veprek is a postdoctoral researcher at the Ludwig Uhland Institute for Historical and Cultural Anthropology at Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen. The cultural anthropologist and computer scientist completed her doctorate at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in the context of the »Playing in the Loop« project (2021-2024) funded by the German Research Foundation. Her main research areas are digital anthropology, anthropology of technology, science and technology studies, moral anthropology and ethics of technology, and digital methods.