Call for Papers
Submission Deadline: April 30, 2026
A conference exploring how different ‘schools’ of philosophy of technology interpret and respond to Artificial Intelligence.
Philosophy of technology has developed through a plurality of traditions that reflect on téchne, technics, technological change, and the role of technology in shaping knowledge, human being and social praxis and relations. Artificial Intelligence has recently become one of the most prominent technological developments engaging these traditions. Rather than constituting an entirely new philosophical field, AI enters an already rich landscape of techno-philosophical thought.
The conference Philosophy of Technology and AI: Traditions, Transitions, and Tensions invites contributions that approach Artificial Intelligence from within the philosophy of technology and reflect on how AI reopens fundamental questions of technics and technology across different traditions, conceptual transitions, and philosophical tensions.
The title highlights three interconnected dimensions of this encounter:
Traditions refer to the diverse schools and lineages within the philosophy of technology that provide conceptual frameworks for interpreting technological developments. These traditions often crystallize around influential authors, methodological approaches, or intellectual constellations within particular philosophical or regional contexts. Whether emerging from phenomenological, ontological, critical, feminist, media-philosophical, pragmatist, or science and technology studies approaches, they offer distinct ways of understanding technology.
Transitions refer to the conceptual and technological shifts associated with AI. Developments such as machine learning, generative models, and large-scale computational infrastructures invite reconsideration of established techno-philosophical concepts and raise questions about how existing philosophical frameworks respond to new technological configurations.
Tensions refer to the conceptual, methodological, and normative disagreements that arise within the philosophy of technology when interpreting AI. Within the philosophy of technology, AI intersects with diverse philosophical problem horizons, including ontological questions of technics and being, theories of human–technology relations, reflections on human activity, labor, and automation as well as approaches that situate technics within broader ecological, natural, or systemic contexts. These differing conceptual starting points shape how AI is interpreted and debated.
The conference aims to bring these techno-philosophical perspectives into dialogue and to explore how AI can be interpreted within, across, and between traditions of the philosophy of technology.
Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
Re-readings of AI through key figures of the philosophy of technology and technics
Underrepresented traditions and voices in the philosophy of technology and their potential to reframe philosophical interpretations of AI
Notions of technics and/or technology in light of AI
Continuities and discontinuities between AI and earlier technics and technologies
AI and human–technics relations
The status of AI: object, tool, milieu, agent, infrastructure, partner?
Ontological questions and AI
Phenomenological perspectives on living and acting with AI
Epistemological shifts
Keynote speakers:
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David J. Gunkel (PhD Philosophy) is an award-winning educator, researcher, and author, specializing in the philosophy of technology with a focus on the moral and legal challenges of artificial intelligence and robots. He is the author of over 115 scholarly articles and has published nineteen books, including Thinking Otherwise: Philosophy, Communication, Technology (Purdue University Press 2007), The Machine Question: Critical Perspectives on AI, Robots, and Ethics (MIT Press 2012), Of Remixology: Ethics and Aesthetics After Remix (MIT Press 2016), Robot Rights (MIT Press 2018), Person, Thing, Robot: A Moral and Legal Ontology for the 21st Century and Beyond (MIT Press 2023), Handbook on the Ethics of AI (Edward Elgar 2024), and Communicative AI: A Critical Introduction to Large Language Models (Polity 2025). He currently holds the position of Department Chair and is Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Communication at Northern Illinois University (USA) and is professor of applied ethics at Łazarski University in Warsaw, Poland.
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Toni Loh (née Janina Sombetzki; pronouns: none; they/them) is (since 2024) Professor of Applied Ethics – in particular Ethics and Transformation at Bonn-Rhein-Sieg University of Applied Sciences at the Center for Ethics and Responsibility (ZEV) and the Department of Social Policy and Social Security. They studied at the Humboldt University Berlin and wrote their dissertation (2009-2013) on the issue of responsibility – Verantwortung als Begriff, Fähigkeit, Aufgabe. Eine Drei-Ebenen-Analyse (Springer 2014). Toni Loh published the first German Introduction to Trans- and Posthumanism (Junius 2018) and an Introduction to Robot Ethics in German language (Suhrkamp 2019). In 2025, Loh’s fourth book was published (in German Language), a study book on the subject of Feminist Philosophy of Technology (transcript/utb.). Current book projects include: Critical Posthumanist Ethics (Kritisch- posthumanistische Ethik; transcript 2028), An Introduction to Polyamory (Polyamorie zur Einführung; together with Wulf Loh; Junius 2027), and Critical Posthumanist Togetherness (Kritisch-posthumanistisches Miteinander; transcript 2028).
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Federica Buongiorno is an Assistant Professor in Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Florence, where she also teaches Phenomenology of Technology and Gender Theories. She obtained her PhD in 2013 from Sapienza University of Rome with a dissertation on the problem of the precategorial in early Husserl, and she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Freie Universität Berlin, the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Storici (IISS) in Naples, TU Dresden, the Istituto Italiano per gli Studi Filosofici (IISF) in Naples, and ICI Berlin. Her research interests include Husserlian and post-Husserlian phenomenology, philosophy of technology (in particular digital self, artificial intelligence and algorithmic systems, self-tracking, and lifelogging), psychoanalysis, and posthuman feminism. She is the author of numerous articles and monographs on these topics and serves as the editor of the international philosophy journal Azimuth as well as the Umweg philosophical book series. She is also a translator of essays from German into Italian.
Conference details:
Date: 4–6 November 2026
Format: 2.5-day conference (Wednesday and Thursday full days, Friday until midday)
Venue: Impulse Haus, University of Bonn
Conference chair: Dr. Jurgita Imbrasaite
Submission guidelines:
Please submit an abstract of 300–500 words together with a short CV (max. 150 words).
Submissions should be sent as one PDF file titled “Abstract-Submission TTT.”
Deadline for submissions: April 30, 2026
Notification of acceptance: by June 1, 2026
Submissions and inquiries can be sent to:
jurgita.imbrasaite@uni-bonn.de