Coordinators

Dr Lonneke van der Velden and Dr Claudio Celis Bueno

Recent developments in the field of machine learning, neural networks, and foundation models have positioned the notion of “artificial intelligence” as a key area of debate. These debates are taking place transversally between the media, the industry, policy makers, and academia. Within the latter, an emerging field of inquiry has emerged: Critical AI studies. The aim of this field is not simply to analyse the technical objects themselves, but to examine the social and political dimensions that shape and are shaped by these emerging technological shifts. Borrowing from a range of disciplines, such as Science and Technology Studies, Philosophy of Technology, Media Studies, Sociology, Critical Theory, and Political Economy, this new field of research attempts to examine the entanglements between technologies, power relations, discursive formations, and economic structures. Furthermore, it does so in an attempt to identify systemic injustices and proposes interventions at the normative, political, and legal levels. By adopting the framework of Critical AI Studies, this project will focus on three tracks (or subprojects):

• AI & Education: What is the impact of machine learning technologies on students’ educational opportunities? What forms of digital literacy are needed to empower youth?
• AI & Labour: What are the different forms of (hidden) labour necessary to develop, deploy, and maintain these models? How are these technologies transforming labour practices and/or building on previous forms of precarisation? What is the valorisation process behind these technologies and how is this different from previous forms of capitalist valorisation (industrial and post-industrial capitalism)? What new conceptual tools are necessary to better grasp the relation between labour, power, and value in the context of algorithmic automation?
• AI & Resistance: What are hidden forms of oppression and unseen practices of resistance that emerge in the new algorithmic ecosystems? What new practices and conceptual frameworks are necessary in order to challenge emerging forms of technical and political oppression?

Project Coordinators:

Lonneke van der Velden is Assistant Professor in Global Digital Cultures at the University of Amsterdam. Her work centres around issues of datafication, surveillance, digital inequalities, and responses by social movements and civil society. In the AIsymmetries project, Lonneke coordinates the research track on AI & Education, focusing on issues of data justice, digital literacy, and resistance. This subproject, Data Justice in the Classroom, aims at understanding the position and perspectives of children in relation to (AI-based) technologies in education.                                              

Claudio Celis Bueno is an Assistant Professor in New Media and Digital Cultures. He is the author of the book The Attention Economy: Labour, Time, and Power in Cognitive Capitalism. His research focuses on the political economy of digital technologies. In the AIsymmetries project, Claudio coordinates the research track on AI & Labour, paying special attention to the uneven power relations that stem from the development and deployment of AI technologies as a new form of automation.

Researchers:

Berhan Taye is a PhD candidate in the AIsymmetries project conducting critical research at the intersection of technology and society, with a focus on the platformization of labor in Kenya. Her work examines how algorithmic management and payment systems are fundamentally reshaping work dynamics and power relations.  Her research aims to systematically map and compare the harms inflicted by automated systems with the corresponding acts of resistance and sabotage enacted by workers. Utilizing Labor Process Analysis, her project investigates the core struggle between the platform's algorithmic logic and the agency of the workers whose livelihoods it controls. By employing a mixed-methods approach, her research will quantitatively and qualitatively analyze algorithmic control and algorithmic wage theft and discrimination while also seeking to broaden our understanding of key concepts such as algorithmic agency, control, resistance, and consent.

Youri Stil is a recent graduate of the New Media and Digital Culture Master’s program at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and is currently serving as a Research Assistant for the AISymmetries project. With an academic foundation in AI, creativity, labor, and digital culture, Youri has developed a strong interest in exploring the intersections between these fields. During his studies, Youri focused on the differing audience receptions to content creators who utilize generative AI in drastically different ways. He explored how this technology shapes and is shaped by the creators who use it, and how their audiences react to their creations. Should the usage of AI be hidden, or should AI be considered and even credited as a contributing creative force? Additionally, with his background in design and creative work, Youri has developed a knack for quickly learning new digital methods and tools, and has personal experience with the creative processes of content creators. For the AISymmetries project, Youri will both utilize and expand his previous work on content creators, platformization, and AI. He will collaborate with Claudio Celis Bueno and Bertran Salvador-Mata to analyze on a deeper level how content creators use AI, and how it affects their workflow beyond just the finished product. Youri’s core driving force is to explore how AI, as an emerging and continually evolving technology, can be harnessed to foster creativity and enhance human experiences instead of diminishing them. AI is often mistreated and funded as the automated replacement of human input, but it doesn’t have to be the death of creativity.

Meg Kitamura is a recent graduate of the Research Master’s in Media Studies at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and is currently serving as Research Assistant for the AIsymmetries project. Originally from Japan, she holds a Bachelor of Science in Media, Culture, and Communication (MCC) from New York University (NYU) and has experience working in (Big) Tech in Japan. She is currently assisting Dr. Lonneke van Velden in investigating how AI-driven Edtech platforms impact children’s experience in the classroom and exploring ways to incorporate student voices into the discourse around AI and Education. As part of the Data Justice in the Classroom project, she will be conducting interviews with stakeholders in Japan to understand how Edtech is both implemented and resisted in the Japanese context. 

Bertran Salvador-Mata is an affiliated researcher in the AIsymmetries project. Bertran is the coordinator of the Chair in Futures of Communication and a postdoctoral researcher at Universitat Pompeu Fabra (Barcelona). His work focuses on the intersection between artificial intelligence and journalism, and on the broader implications of AI in communication and media. He also co-directs one of the sections of the +RAIN Film Festival, the first European festival for films made with AI. Bertran is also a lecturer in the Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and in several master’s programs, as well as a member of the Board of Directors of the Catalan Society of Communication. As an affiliated researcher at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), Bertran analyses how agency is distributed and negotiated in the adoption and use of AI within the audiovisual industry. Specifically, he studies how the typology developed by Celis Bueno et al. can be used to examine how processes of agency unfold in the audiovisual industry, approaching AI distributed agency from a relational perspective and exploring its implications for creative practices.

Victoire Delacourt is a second-year student in the Media and Culture bachelor at the University of Amsterdam and a student assistant in the AIsymmetries project. As part of the first track of the honours programme, Victoire chose to pursue a Research Practicum, which led her to the ASCA research institute and the AIsymmetries project. As part of the project, she is currently exploring the impact of AI on education as well as questions surrounding AI and creativity. She is building a dataset that maps current controversies, key actors, media projects, activist initiatives, and relevant sources related to the use of AI or directly about AI. Victoire is also preparing a book review of The Empire of AI (Hao, 2025).

Associated Researcher

Stefania Milan (www.stefaniamilan.net) works at the intersection of political participation, technology, and governance, with focus on infrastructure and political agency. She is Professor of Critical Data Studies at University of Amsterdam, affiliated with the the Florence School of Transnational Governance (European University Institute) and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society (Harvard University). Stefania holds a PhD in Political and Social Science from the European University Institute. Stefania is the PI of the project DATAGOV-Governance by Data Infrastructure in the Post-Pandemic Democracy, funded by the European Research Council. She loves experimenting with participatory and computational methods. Her research has once been called “undisciplined”.

Previous Events:

(2025) Understanding creative labour in the age of AI, Workshop organized by Claudio Celis Bueno and Thomas Poell.

(2025) Synthetic Data: the Real Subsumption of Data Production, Masterclass by Dr. James Steinhoff.

Image credits: Anne Fehres and Luke Conroy & AI4Media