Part of the “AI and the Digital” series. Arguably, AI is the most important cultural adaptation since the invention of language, and it is moving ahead at light speed – way beyond our ability to regulate or even comprehend it. This discussion will explain the basics of the Transformer architecture that powers ChatGPT and similar AIs, and explore their implications for our collective futures and political processes.

A dominant view describes AI as the quest “to solve intelligence” – a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind or the complex neural networks of the brain. Matteo Pasquinelli’s 2023 book, The Eye of the Master, argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations.

We are all aging at every moment. Yet many people and cultures are uncomfortable with impermanence, transitions, and “getting old.” How well do our usual models of “successful aging” shape up and how can the challenges of later life become a catalyst for
personal/spiritual growth and social contribution? In this dialogue, Drew Leder and Kirsten Jacobson will consider the question: how can and do we find richness and meaning in the second half of life? This is an urgent question for each of us and for culture at large.

A key vulnerability for cognitively limited beings such as ourselves arises from trust. Much of the current misinformation crisis seems to derive from misplaced trust – trust in anti-science celebrities, trust in conspiracy theory forums and propagandistic media networks sources. Because we are so cognitively small, in order to cope with the world, we must trust each other, and that trust makes us profoundly vulnerable. How are we to know which group to trust?