The Creative AI Lab and the Computational Humanities Research Group in the Department of Digital Humanities have the pleasure to invite you to this talk and discussion on the role of the humanities in imagining AI futures by philosopher of technology Adam Nocek from Arizona State University.

About the talk

The premise of this talk is that we need to think about artificial intelligence (AI) as a complex ecosystem, and that doing so requires navigating thorny disputes in the theoretical humanities and social sciences concerning the autonomy and environmental dependency of machine learning algorithms. Further, the talk contends that steering this course requires entering into series of debates concerning AI and its metaphysical, political and ecological existence. The proposal for an ecologically complex view of machine learning outlined in this talk will take shape against the backdrop of various tensions and dead ends that arise in two competing theoretical discourses: the first stresses the autonomy of computational rationality, the second emphasizes the dependency and impact these algorithmic systems have on planetary systems. Along the way, the talk will trace the ways in which these different conceptual projects also become legible through divergent but equal investments in Karl Marx’s work on automation. But ultimately, certain intractable problems regarding machine learning and its relation to the interiority and exteriority of algorithmic systems will give us permission to search for a revised conception of ecological complexity in the work of Conrad Hal Waddington, Lynn Margulis, and Alfred North Whitehead. Such a reframing will also seed new potentials for political critique, and also reaffirm the central importance of the theoretical humanities for engaging AI futures.

Speaker bio

Adam Nocek is Associate Professor of Philosophy of Technology and Science and Technology Studies at the School of Arts, Media + Engineering, Arizona State University. He is the Founding Director of the Center for Philosophical Technologies (CPT) and Editor of Techniques Journal. He is the author of Molecular Capture: The Animation of Biology (2021) and is working on his next monograph, Governmental Design: On Algorithmic Autonomy.

Website: adamnocek.com

Free, all welcome. Please register.