Playgrounds of Care—Socialization between Flesh and Code

The playground as a training ground for sociality: What happens when AI becomes part of learning processes? An event about new forms of socialization and relationships between humans and technology.

The playground is not a neutral space; it is a training ground for sociality. In the sandbox, children learn to test boundaries, negotiate roles, endure conflicts, and practice care. Far from being the opposite of seriousness, play is a fundamental mode through which social realities are explored and created.

But how are such experimental spaces changing in the face of rapid technological development? As AI increasingly intervenes in social processes and structures communication spaces, the conditions of socialization are shifting alongside. The issue involves not only technical infrastructures, but also about how learning processes—human and machine alike—are organized.

While AI development often follows a logic of efficiency and scale, socialization requires spaces of openness and failure. The playground thus becomes a counterfigure, a place for questioning, experimentation, and new beginnings. Play allows for the unfinished, the processual, and the unpredictable.

Central questions arise from this conflict: What would it mean to viewAI not merely as a powerful tool, but as part of a social fabric? And what would it mean to design technological systems not for maximum performance, but for their capacity to form relationships?

This event is designed as an open forum for debate. Together with guests from the arts, computer science, and social sciences, we will explore new forms of relationship, care, and cooperation in the age of AI.