What an absolute treat it was to host N. Katherine Hayles at the School of Cybernetics – thanks to Professor Chris Danta’s Australian Research Council Future Fellowship: Fables, Literature, Evolution, and Artificial Intelligence.
Distinguished Professor N. Katherine Hayles is the James B. Duke Professor Emerita from Duke University and the Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California. She has written over 100 peer reviewed academic articles and 12 print books, with her latest being Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts .
Katherine, as you have just read, is a prolific writer. She is also a postmodern literary critic as well as a researcher with specialties in the relationship between literature, science and technology in the 20th & 21st centuries.
Katherine is one of the leading voices in 21st century cybernetics. While she is critical of the early cybernetic focus on individual autonomy, her latest work sees cybernetics as helping us to think and act more sustainably and hopefully by connecting human, nonhuman, technological, and environmental actors and cognizers – a deeply cybernetical proposed ecology of relationality.
Katherine’s public talk (which you can watch below) was an incredible evening discussing her latest thesis on the connections between bacteria and AI, and the symbiosis we as humans have with nonhuman living and nonliving beings.
One of the central points in Katherine’s latest book is that human flourishing and survival depend on us seeing ourselves as being connected with nonhuman life on this planet. Heading towards more hopeful futures, this book’s aim is to combat anthropocentrism (centering of humans) and instead suggest other perspectives more conducive to planet-wide survival and flourishing.
Exploring the idea of the world of beings through their cognition or consciousness opens the possibility of discussing the ‘umwelt’ of machines and AI systems. This is where Katherine’s talk gets very cybernetic, investigating a computer’s “umwelt” or what a computer might know about its world. This rich discussion was a popular one, with so many questions about a machine’s ‘umwelt’ in our Q&A with the audience.
This public talk was followed up with a session with ANU staff and students. A two-hour workshop talking about AI agency, using chat systems to interpret literature, and using these experiences to better understand our current symbiosis with these technologies.
Hosting N. Katherine Hayles at the School of Cybernetics was a treat for our community.
Thank you to all who attended.
Below is a recording of the public talk: