Kars Alfrink

Talked AI infrastructure, speculation, and real utopias with students at Leiden today.

This was a guest lecture for the course AI in Society. I presented the argument from my position paper, People's Compute, and used the occasion to pilot some new material I am developing on speculative design and realism, with the working title Grounded Futures. The students were a thoughtful bunch and gave me a lot of provocative and helpful questions to chew on.

As usual, the slides are on my website. https://contestable.ai/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/designing-ai-otherwise-leiden-university-20260504-optimized.pdf

Many thanks to Zane Kripe for the invitation.

Voor de echte nerds, een paar invloedrijke artikelen over zelfrijdende auto's en verantwoordelijkheid:

1. de Sio et al. (2023). Realising Meaningful Human Control Over Automated Driving Systems. Minds and Machines, 33(4), 587–611. https://doi.org/10/gqktcj
2. Elish, M. C. (2019). Moral Crumple Zones: Cautionary Tales in Human-Robot Interaction. Engaging Science, Technology, and Society, 5, 40–60. https://doi.org/10/gf2t99
3. Stilgoe, J. (2018). Machine learning, social learning and the governance of self-driving cars. Social Studies of Science, 48(1), 25–56. https://doi.org/10/gckx3b

What better place to explore regenerative community computing than at Creative Coding Utrecht, home of artist Sunjoo Lee's electric garden?

Last Friday, Sunjoo Lee, Fieke Jansen, Lena Trotereau and I ran a second iteration of our workshop "From Soil to Servers." We had a diverse, thoughtful group of people come together to build small devices powered by microbial fuel cells, and to envision what those hands-on experiences might mean for ideas of the future of a computing that is sustainable in the proper sense of the word. All of it once again captured by Lena in a live drawing.

Many thanks to Martina Denegri and Fabian van Sluijs for having us and for all the participants who joined us.

I'll be speaking on human autonomy and AI at the Dutch Data Protection Authority's annual AI and algorithms seminar. https://www.aanmelder.nl/174190/aanmelden

Enjoyed attending the launch of the 4TU.Design United Research School. Jealous of all those Dutch design research PhDs who will undoubtedly benefit tremendously from its current and future course offerings. https://www.4tu.nl/du/Research-school/

We (Sunjoo, Fieke, Lena, and I) will conduct a second iteration of our workshop on mud batteries and computing infrastructure titled "Soil to Servers" at Creative Coding Utrecht during the Week of the Circular Economy next week. https://creativecodingutrecht.nl/en/calendar/soil-to-servers

I'll be in Amsterdam this Friday for the 2026 unconference on digital autonomy. https://www.meetup.com/code-for-nl/events/312499192/