AI and creativity | Polly Denny & N. Katherine Hayles | Absolutely Interdisciplinary 2023

How can we re-conceptualize creativity, whether human or non-human, in light of the latest advances in AI and our interactions with it? How do new technologies impact our conceptions of self, language, expression, and art? Incorporating tools and insights from science and technology studies, literary criticism, and creative practice, this session will turn a humanities lens on the crucial sociotechnical problems of the current moment.
Speakers: Polly Denny, N. Katherine Hayles, Avery Slater (moderator)
Performing on stages such as the Royal Albert Hall and with partners such as the BBC, Polly Denny is a poet, performer, and facilitator working to explore emotion, confidence, and imagination. Alternating from humor and wit to sincere and moving, her work explores a wide range of ideas with a particular interest in the nature of creativity and its impact on human expression and our connection to the world and each other. Denny has worked as the Young Poet Laureate for Bath, is an alumni of Roundhouse’s Words First Programme, and is a UK National Slam Champion. She is currently exploring the intersection of creativity and artificial intelligence, and asking what this means for the imaginative mind.
N. Katherine Hayles teaches and writes on the relations of literature, science, and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her most recent book, Postprint: Books and Becoming Computational, was published by the Columbia University Press (Spring 2021). Among her dozen books are How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature and Informatics, which won the Rene Wellek Prize for the Best Book in Literary Theory for 1998-99, and Writing Machines, which won the Suzanne Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. In addition, she is Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles and the James B. Duke Professor of Literature Emerita at Duke University.
About Absolutely Interdisciplinary:
Absolutely Interdisciplinary sets out to generate new conversations and insights by pairing scholars from different disciplines to address a common research question. By examining the impacts of technical systems on society through multiple perspectives, the conference aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogues to better understand how AI can promote human well-being for everyone. Learn more: absolutelyinterdisciplinary.c...
0:00 Intro
3:25 Polly Denny, "I Was Once Like You" & "The Human Condition"
28:03 N. Katherine Hayles, "Inside the Mind of an AI: Collective Cognition and New Modes of Reading/Writing"
1:03:11 Discussion
1:15:05 Q&A
1:59:42 Closing remarks