Join us for a CEAPS Brown Bag with PhD student Conference Travel Grant recipients Jiwon Oh and Darren Chuang
About the Speakers
Jiwon Jenn Oh is a PhD Student at the University of Illinois in the Institute of Communications Research. Her research interests broadly encompass transnational and feminist STS, AI ethics and governance, and East Asian technocultures, with a particular focus on the cultural and political life of AI and how discourses of innovation, intimacy, and governance are entangled in the production of relational AI. She holds an M.A. in Communication from Seoul National University, and a B.S. in Media, Culture, and Communication from New York University.
Darren (Sheng-Hsuan) Chuang is a second-year PhD student in Musicology at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. His research lies at the intersection of ethnomusicology, popular music studies, Taiwan and East Asian studies, and gender studies. He is particularly interested in how Taiwanese popular music both reflects and shapes expressions of Taiwanese masculinities, especially as they intersect with class, cultural identity, and national discourses within broader East Asian and global contexts. Before pursuing his PhD at U of I, he earned his BA in Chinese Literature from National Cheng Kung University (Taiwan), a dual MA in Arts and Humanities Education and Musicology from Taipei National University of the Arts (Taiwan), and an MPhil in Music Studies from Wolfson College, University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).
Title: Navigating Gendered Anthropomorphism in AI Ethics: The Case of Lee Luda in South Korea
Abstract: The Lee Luda controversy was a pivotal moment that inaugurated nationwide discourses surrounding AI ethics in South Korea. As a conversational chatbot designed to simulate lifelike conversations, Luda quickly gained attention for its human-like interaction capabilities but soon became the center of controversy due to its use of private human conversations for training, leading to unintended disclosures of personal details and generating responses filled with hate speech and sexual content manipulation. This incident prompted widespread public concern and regulatory scrutiny, leading to suspension of the service and subsequent fines imposed by the government. In response, ScatterLab introduced an ‘AI Chatbot Ethics Checklist’ to address ethical concerns in AI development. This study examines the aftermath of the Lee Luda incident, focusing on ScatterLab’s ethical response and the broader implications for AI ethics and gender in Korea, underscoring the need for inclusive and ethical AI design practices to mitigate biases in AI technologies.
Title: Sailing in Sonic Vortex: Close Listening to Taike Tunes in Taiwan’s Post-Martial Law Music Scene
Abstract: Taiwan possesses a unique and fluid sociocultural landscape that shapes its musical sphere into a “sonic vortex.” Since the post-martial law era, amid processes of internal sociocultural opening, transformation, and contestation, as well as shifting geopolitics and accelerating globalization, Taiwanese popular music has gained renewed momentum, intricately weaving together diverse cultural symbols and emerging through interconnections with musical flows from East Asia and beyond.
Against this backdrop, this paper examines how Taiwanese music articulates both inter-Asian connections and a localized form of globality, while also demonstrating how it reflects, and even participates in, Taiwan’s complex history of successive colonial regimes. Focusing on case studies that vocalize taike / 8+9 culture—a subculture renowned for its performances of distinct Taiwanese masculinities and expressions of Taiwaneseness—I approach music as a multilayered text of verbal, sonic, and visual symbols, employing musical semiotics in dialogue with inter-Asian studies and global history. In doing so, through the analysis of both verbal and non-verbal symbols, I aim to reposition the musical object itself—the sound—as an indispensable component of popular music studies.
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