Roundtable: Artificial Intelligence, Agency, and Ethics in Cultural Practice

Artificial Intelligence, Agency, and Ethics in Cultural Practice

Roundtable 2: 9:30 am-12pm
Thursday 20 February 2020
Digital Learning Space, Joyce Ackroyd Building (#37)

There are many historical examples of art responding to imperatives from outside of art. AI seems set to have this kind of influence. There are examples of plausible-appearing AI-produced art. AI-written screenplays show that the machines still have a long way to go but they should alert us to possible futures in which our most celebrated artists are machines. I connect this issue with the long-running debate about whether it’s possible for a machine to think. This could make it rational for us to respond to AI art not with amusement, but with hostility.

Commentators:

Professor Fred D’Agostino (Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, UQ)

Dr. Eve Klein (Music, UQ)

Dr. Ted Nannicelli (Communication and Arts, UQ)

Professor Janet Wiles (Information Technology and Electrical Engineering, UQ)

Open Q&A and Discussion (1 hour)

Professor Nicholas Agar is a New Zealand philosopher at Victoria University of Wellington. He has written books on the ethics of human enhancement, including Liberal Eugenics (Blackwell, 2004) and Humanity’s End (MIT Press, 2010), and on the meaning of technological progress – The Sceptical Optimist (Oxford University Press, 2015). His latest book, How to be Human in the Digital Economy (MIT Press, 2019), addresses the human consequences of the digital revolution.