[Conférence] The Artificial Intelligence Moment

La MSH Val de Loire accueille Adrian S. Wisnicki, chercheur invité de l’Université de Tours auprès de l’équipe Interactions Culturelles et Discursives (ICD), pour une conférence en anglais intitulée The Artificial Intelligence Moment, de 10h à 12h.

This presentation will offer an extended reflection on the rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the current historical moment. The speaker, Adrian S. Wisnicki (University of Nebraska-Lincoln), has been teaching courses on the impact of technology, including AI, on contemporary society for nearly a decade. The presentation, therefore, will consider the representation of AI in fiction, film, and culture over the last seventy or so years. It will consider how creatives have envisioned AI as both an embodied and disembodied entity and will also address some of the ways that issues related to gender and race have informed such representations. After this historical reflection, the speaker will move to discuss AI in the present day, 2024, and explore some of the most recent developments in the field and their implications. As a US-based scholar, the speaker will be keen to characterize the current reception of AI technologies like ChatGPT in the United States as a way of setting the stage for the Q&A that will comprise the second half of the presentation and offer a chance to think comparatively about the reception of AI in Europe and particularly France.

About the Speaker

Adrian S. Wisnicki is an Associate Professor of English, Digital Humanities Program Coordinator, and Faculty Fellow of the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is a founding developer of Undisciplining the Victorian Classroom, lead developer for One More Voice, and director of Livingstone Online. His recent book is Fieldwork of Empire (Routledge, 2019), and he has interests in Victorian and postcolonial studies, the digital humanities, artificial intelligence, activism, and racial and social justice. He has just been promoted to the rank of Full Professor with effect from 1 August 2024.