MIT CAST Symposium gathering artists, scientists, and humanists to discuss aesthetic, technical, and critical issues pertaining to artificial intelligence (AI) and computation.

Thursday, April 1 / 5-7pm // Generative Unfoldings Exhibition Opening Reception

Friday, April 2 / 9am // Deep Time & Intelligence and Unfolding Models Video Presentation Release

Monday, April 5 / 11am // Deep Time & Intelligence Livestream Q&A

Monday, April 5 / 5pm // Unfolding Models Livestream Q&A

Wednesday, April 7 / 11am // Bias in AI Livestream Presentations and Q&A

Thursday, April 8 / 11am // Open Systems Part One, Livestream Presentations and Q&A

Thursday, April 8 / 5pm // Open Systems Part Two, Livestream Presentations and Q&A

Friday, April 9 / 11am - 1pm // Breakout Rooms Meet the Speakers / Matthew Ritchie Q&A

In our dreams, computers were meant to be humanity’s helpmeet, easing our work, enlivening our play, and amplifying our creativity. In our nightmares, they are forces of control and surveillance, their algorithms undoing democracy and enabling exploitation. “Unfolding Intelligence: The Art and Science of Contemporary Computation” gathers artists, scientists, and humanists to discuss aesthetic, technical, and critical issues pertaining to artificial intelligence (AI) and computation. The goal of this interdisciplinary conversation is to bridge popular and tech-world understandings of AI as well as domain-specific, academic, and artistic approaches. The panel discussions stage art-science encounters with the goal of mingling otherwise enclosed areas of research, allowing for new public scrutiny and creating an inclusive field of inquiry that encourages a socially engaged view of our machines.  

The four “Unfolding Intelligence” panels address the following questions: How do recent tools in computation shape the models that scientists, artists, and engineers make of the world and universe? Can artists and scientists create a world in which Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) and artificial intelligence (AI) are meaningfully brought together? Can AI and software systems explain how historically recalcitrant forms of oppression persist, embedded in our technologies? Can these same agents possibly provide alternative ways of being and living together? How has computation shaped the concept of intelligence and what models for the unfolding or formation of ideas does it provide?