Unveiling the Program for AI-Imaginations and Public Safety Symposium, organized by AI-MAPS!

AI has reshaped public safety—but overwhelmingly as a tool of control, not care. Deployed under a law-and-order logic, it has failed to deliver true safety while opening a Pandora's box of new harms. The conclusion is clear: We need better AI. But how, when the "genie" of surveillance tech cannot be put back in the bottle? First, we need new ways of thinking—fundamentally reimagining AI's role in society. Imagination is how we envision yet unmade possibilities for ourselves and others. This symposium challenges punitive paradigms, demanding instead: How can we imagine AI not as a tool of control, but as one of justice, care, and collective well-being? We explore "AI to come"—new ways of understanding, envisioning, and implementing AI that promote more equitable, humane, and sustainable societies— so that technology may return to its original meaning in Greek: Technê as the skilled mastery in service of the community, rather than control.

The full program is now available

As you can explore in the program, we are thrilled to host distinguished keynote speakers:

• Selmar Smit (TNO, The Netherlands): Selmar Smit is Manager Science & Technology Autonomous Systems & Decision Support at TNO. He is responsible for, among other things, the development of AI for police and defense, but is also the founder of GPT-NL, a Dutch open language model.
• David Lyon (Queen's University, Canada): David Lyon is professor emeritus at the Department of Sociology and Law at Queen's University and is the former director of the Surveillance Studies Centre. Credited with spearheading the field of ‘Surveillance Studies’, he has produced a steady stream of books that began with The Electronic Eye (1994) and continued with Surveillance Society (2001), Surveillance after September 11 (2003), Surveillance Studies (2007), Identifying Citizens (2009), Liquid Surveillance (with Zygmunt Bauman, 2013) and The Culture of Surveillance: Watching as a Way of Life (2018).
• Mareile Kaufmann (University of Oslo, Norway): Mareile Kaufmann is professor at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, University of Oslo. Kaufmann's current work consolidates and further shapes the field of digital criminology with a specific focus on data practices. Her latest book is Making Information Matter (2023).

Please reach out for questions, comments or thoughts you may have!

Marc Schuilenburg & Majsa Storbeck