Call for Participants: The Social Life of Mathematical Reasoning – Algorithms, AI, and the Politics of Proof (Reading group)

[Kati Kish]

Call for Participants - Reading group:

The Social Life of Mathematical Reasoning: Algorithms, AI, and the Politics of Proof

AI-based technologies now mediate processes once considered uniquely human: intuition, conjecture, and discovery. They extend mathematical practice into networks of computation, coordination, and prediction that blur the line between reasoning and automation. As these systems are increasingly deployed beyond mathematics, shaping decisions in governance, finance, education, and health, they also extend the reach of mathematical ideals into the social world. In other words, the changing methods of mathematical inquiry now travel with their tools into public life, carrying assumptions about objectivity, efficiency, and control.

Building on this shift, mathematical models and algorithms increasingly organize how we understand and manage the world - from predicting economic risk and measuring social behavior to evaluating academic success and allocating resources. Yet their authority rests on a long and contested intellectual history: the belief that numbers can represent human realities, that formal systems can ensure fairness, and that reason can be made mechanical. Our conversations will foreground how these intellectual commitments gain institutional power when embedded in large, coordinated infrastructures of research and decision-making.

We will ask:

• How have the ideals of mathematical neutrality and objectivity shaped modern systems of governance, prediction, and control?
• What happens when trust in human judgment is replaced by faith in models and data?
• How does the automation of reasoning challenge older conceptions of intuition, proof, and expertise in mathematics, and what can this tell us about AI’s authority in society today?
• If legitimacy increasingly turns on model performance rather than public reasoning, what counts as “understanding” or “justification” and who gets to provide it?

We invite scholars and students in history, philosophy, mathematics, computer science, and the social sciences who are interested in examining how AI-based mathematical reasoning has become a governing logic of modern life and its impact on our social lives to join our reading group.

Meeting time: monthly on Thursdays from 10:00 to 11:30 (Eastern Time; 16:00–17:30 Berlin/CET Time), November through June
Location: Online
To join contact: kk...@bu.edu

*** First meeting on November 20 ***  

Organizers:
Kati Kish Bar-On (Boston University & MIT)
Michael Friedman (Bonn University)

 

Kati Kish Bar-On, PhD

Check out my new book INTUITIONISM RESOCIALIZED 

Postdoctoral IMPACT fellow, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Lecturer, Northeastern University

https://www.katikish.com/