CFP: Philosophy of Technology and AI: Traditions, Transitions, and Tensions

Philosophy of technology has developed through a plurality of traditions that reflect on techné, 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 

David Gunkel (confirmed)

Toni Loh (invited)

Conference details

Date: 4–6 November 2026
Format: 2.5-day conference (Wednesday and Thursday full days, Friday until midday)

Venue:
The IMPULSE-House
University of Bonn

Submission guidelines

Please submit an abstract of 300–500 words together with a short CV (max. 150 Wörter).

Submissions should be sent as one PDF file titled “Abstract-Submission TTT.”

Deadline for submissions: 30 April
Notification of acceptance: by 1 June

Submissions and inquiries can be sent to:
[email protected]