Notes from Alternative Intelligence Symposium @QMUL
The Alternative Intelligence Symposium was not just academic but also literary and artistic. It was stimulating to catch up with the current AI technology and its critiques. The presenters and panels were diverse in their expertise and perspectives on the matter. I was inspired by such varied subjects, including circus, classical music, metal and rock, intimacy and technology, attention, writing, and teaching!
The most memorable part was Dr Kate Devlin’s keynote. Intimacy has always been one of my interests, and her talk made me think more about people’s inclination to bond. I never considered some (now obvious) points Dr Devlin laid out, like how people have always had intimate feelings toward objects, with or without advanced technology.
I’m left with messy notes to reorganise, many recommendations, and lots of new stuff to explore.
Event Summary
- Alternative Intelligences: Playing with AI Symposium & Poetry Night
- Date: 21 June, 2024
- Location: BLOC, ArtsOne at Queen Mary University of London
- Programme:
- Re-reading AI Visuality: Play, Violence and the Unreal Professor Yasmin Ibrahim
- Radical Attention: An essay on the battle for our attention in the age of distraction Julia Bell
- Human Learning x Machine Learning Professor Atau Tanaka
- Guitar Tablature Generation with AI Pedro Pereira Sarmento
- Do you need any body? The friendly machine Dr Kate Devlin
- The neuroqueer collaboration with Large Language Models behind My Child, the Algorithm Dr Hannah Silva
- Imagined Languages in Top Doll Karen McCarthy Woolf
- Circus and AI Laurane Marchive, Q&A chaired by Olivia Warren
- GenAI or ‘Collective Intelligence’: Expertise and the Future of (Teaching) Writing Dr Marit MacArthur
- Pedagogy and anti-racisim within AI Dr Marit MacArthur in conversation with Dr Gurnam Singh
- Neuroqueering Poetry, performances and panel discussion with Hannah Silva, Debris Stevenson, Kayo Chingonyi, Safiya Kamaria Kinshasa - panel led by Professor Matthew Rubery