SXSW 2023

Humans vs. Machine: Language Informs Our Future

Description:

While we’re all catastrophizing about the latest terrifying news about the AI of the week going sentient, there's a far greater threat on our horizon: we are becoming the AI we fear. We’ve observed, time and time again, that the language we use to describe ourselves is more like machine and AI - and we are losing what makes us human. Why? We've found that the metaphors that we use reveal how we unconsciously think we’re more akin to machines and robots than we ever realized; we talk about our bandwidth, feeling recharged, we unplug and we go offline, we have outages in our productivity. We think in simplistic binaries, unable to wrestle with the complex gray area of our human experience. What happens when there won’t be any of what makes “us” in the future?


Additional Supporting Materials


Takeaways

  1. The metaphors and emotions that illuminate our deepest unconscious thoughts and feelings that show our propensity to see ourselves as mere machines.
  2. How the loss of what makes us human is the core tension that should be the focus of our attention today.
  3. What we should do to regain our humanity and think boldly beyond the binary to reshape our minds and the conversation.

Speakers

  • Jessica Kukreti, Managing Director, Research Studio, VMLY&R
  • Matt Klein, Cultural Strategist & Advisor, Zine

Organizer

Jessica Kukreti, Managing Director, Research Studio, VMLY&R


Meta Information:

  • Event: SXSW
  • Format: Presentation
  • Track: 2050
  • Track 2
  • Level: Beginner


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