Past Event! Note: this event has already taken place.
| When: | Thursday, April 2nd, 2026 |
| Time: | 10:00 am — 4:00 pm |
| Location: | Richcraft Hall, 4400, SJC Resource Centre |
| Audience: | Alumni, Carleton Community, Current Students, Faculty, Professionals, Staff and Faculty |
| Contact: | Liam Young, LiamC.Young@carleton.ca |
AI is everywhere but nobody really knows what it is, what it means, or what its ends will be. Not even the sector’s major developers and investors.
Institutions and individuals are told to prepare for the AI revolution, already underway, that will transform every corner of culture and politics. Industry talking points have quickly migrated into institutional frameworks and strategic planning. AI skepticism is typically dismissed using familiar tropes of ludditism. More considered arguments suggest most skepticism rests on assumptions about, or experiences with, out-of-date models.
Meanwhile, the global economy is increasingly integrated with AI not just via large-scale infrastructure build-outs of data centres and energy grids, but also through investment strategies of pension funds and private capital alike. The tech sector has happily collected capital for an all-in AI push with NVIDIA, OpenAI, Google and Anthropic leading the way. Thirteen-figure company valuations and utopian pronouncements from CEOs have positioned the AI sector as “too big to fail.” But influential voices in investment and intellectual circles suggest the bubble is going to burst, and fast.
What is the role of scholarship and intellectual culture amidst all of this flux? How can academics elbow their way into policy conversations, whether at the local level of our home institutions or more broadly at various levels of government and industry?
To try to get some collective bearings, we will approach the thorny problem of AI through the scholarly field of Communication and Media Studies, asking, among other questions, how scholars are responding to AI within Canadian universities and policy in a moment where our universities and government are mobilizing discourses of productivity (to integrate AI into the substrate of government and business), geopolitical rivalry (to integrate into defence or adopt digital sovereignty stances), and acceleration into futures of ambient and abundant AI (students and citizens must adapt rapidly—whether this is to accept or mobilize a political opposition to this situation)
More generally, we ask:
- What is AI? (what technologies, institutions, cultures, people comprise it as an apparatus or stack)
- Which events and experiences define at present?
- How should AI be situated historically? Is it ruptural or sedimentary? What is at stake in adopting these, or other, historical lenses?
- Which intellectual frameworks or traditions help us to pose questions about and develop relationships to AI, or to more generally think through our emerging “AI condition”?
- How do bubbles burst and what comes after? How do actors of various kinds comport themselves to take advantage of the post-bubble moment?
THE ENDS OF AI
A Symposium on Technopolitics and Intellectual Culture
When: Thursday, April 2, 2026 • 10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Where: SJC Resource Centre (Richcraft Hall 4400) • Carleton University
10:00 |
Welcome and Opening Remarks |
Mary Francoli, Dean, Faculty of Public Affairs
Liam Young, Co-Director, School of Journalism and Communication
10:15–11:15 |
Panel 1: What Even Is AI? |
AI is purported to be the most economically and socially consequential technology in a generation, and nobody—not the developers, the investors, or the regulators—can quite agree on what it is. This panel examines AI as an apparatus: the institutions, industries, and geopolitical rivalries steering its development; the cultural imaginaries shaping how publics make sense of it; and the disruptions already reshaping teaching, labour, and higher education.
Hannah Dick, Carleton (moderator)
Tanner Mirrlees, Ontario Tech University
Sibo Chen, Toronto Metropolitan University
15-minute break
11:30–12:30 |
Panel 2: “More Important Than Ever”: Humanistic Engagements with AI |
If AI is transforming what counts as knowledge, authorship, and expertise, then the humanities and social sciences are not peripheral to the conversation—they are at its centre. Panelists share surprises, frustrations, and ongoing transformations in their own research practices, and consider what it means to develop a productive scholarly relationship with generative and agentic AI rather than simply adopting or refusing it.
Liam Young, Carleton (moderator)
Sandra Robinson, Carleton
Patrick McCurdy, University of Ottawa
12:30–13:30 |
Lunch |
Lunch is on your own. Be sure to stop by “Futures Corner” in the Student Lounge space of the Resource Centre.
13:30–14:30 |
Panel 3: The Data Fix Podcast — Live Recording |
The Data Fix examines the material politics of data—from undersea cables and data centres to the environmental costs of computation. Join host Mél Hogan for a live recording of the podcast, featuring a conversation that connects the symposium’s themes to the infrastructural and ecological dimensions of AI.
Mél Hogan, Queen’s University (host)
Sonja Solomun, McGill University
15-minute break
14:45–15:45 |
Panel 4: AI Wars Are Here — What Now?! |
The military dimensions of AI are accelerating faster than any governance framework can track. Jeremy Packer joins us to examine the role of defence institutions and contractors in shaping AI development, the prospects for meaningful limits on autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, and the political economy of companies like Palantir that sit at the intersection of Silicon Valley and the Pentagon.
Chris Russill, Carleton (moderator)
Jeremy Packer, University of Toronto
| 15:45–16:00 | Closing Discussion
Chris Russill and Liam Young, Conveners |
| 16:15–18:00 | Reception
Mike’s Place, Nideyinán (second floor). |
Presented by Communication and Media Studies in the School of Journalism and Communication, Carleton University