BEGIN:VCALENDAR PRODID;X-RICAL-TZSOURCE=TZINFO:-//Calagator//EN CALSCALE:GREGORIAN X-WR-CALNAME:Calagator METHOD:PUBLISH VERSION:2.0 BEGIN:VTIMEZONE TZID;X-RICAL-TZSOURCE=TZINFO:America/Los_Angeles BEGIN:DAYLIGHT DTSTART:20260308T020000 RDATE:20260308T020000 TZOFFSETFROM:-0800 TZOFFSETTO:-0700 TZNAME:PDT END:DAYLIGHT END:VTIMEZONE BEGIN:VEVENT CREATED;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260915T182354Z DTEND;TZID=America/Los_Angeles;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20261001T190000 DTSTART;TZID=America/Los_Angeles;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20261001T170000 DTSTAMP;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260915T182354Z LAST-MODIFIED;VALUE=DATE-TIME:20260915T182354Z UID:http://calagator.org/events/1250482713 DESCRIPTION:When AI begins to feel uncanny\, dangerous\, or too powerful to contain\, our cultural imagination reaches quickly for Frankenstein.& #13\;\n \;\nThe comparison is everywhere in the current news cycle: a creation escapes its maker\, technology accelerates beyond human contro l\, and the world discovers too late that it has built something it cann ot govern. The fear is not foolish. AI is moving rapidly into the system s that shape work\, education\, media\, public services\, and democratic life. \;\n \;\nBut Frankenstein offers a more interesting warning than the one we usually tell. Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel was shaped by f ascination with galvanism\, the early electrical experiments that made d ead muscle appear to twitch. Its central horror is not simply that Victo r Frankenstein creates something powerful. It is that he creates it and then abandons responsibility for what follows. \;\n \;\nIn This Is Not a Talk About AI\, digital anthropologist Ali Maaxa\, Ph.D. asks wha t changes when we stop treating AI as an alien force with a destiny of i ts own and start recognizing it as a human-built infrastructure. A syste m does not simply “take over.” It receives power through human decisions : whose data it uses\, who funds it\, what it is allowed to access\, whi ch institutions treat its outputs as legitimate\, whose labor maintains it\, and whether people can challenge its decisions. \;\n \;\nThe story begins long before AI. \;\n \;\nNeanderthals made birch-bark tar with controlled fire to bind stone tools to handles and hunting sha fts. The Gutenberg Bible made authoritative texts reproducible at unprec edented scale and turned interpretation into a public struggle. Electric ity extended the human day and television reorganized public attention. The internet promised open connection before becoming an infrastructure of platforms\, surveillance\, ranking\, and concentrated control. \;\ n \;\nEach technology changed not only what people could do\, but wha t became normal. Each produced new anxieties\, new gatekeepers\, new for ms of dependence\, and new struggles over who should set the rules. \ ;\n \;\nAI belongs in that longer history. It is not “just like” fire \, print\, or electricity. It is faster\, more networked\, more opaque\, and increasingly able to generate language\, classify people\, and act through connected systems. It also has a body: chips\, data centers\, el ectricity\, water\, land\, extraction\, invisible labor\, public subsidi es\, and communities asked to absorb costs that rarely appear in a produ ct demo. \;\n \;\nFor more than 20 years\, Dr. Maaxa has studied h ow people around the world encounter\, repurpose\, resist\, innovate wit h\, and make meaning around emerging technologies. As a researcher funde d by Mellon\, Peacock\, REACH\, Wilgus\, and NEH\, an author of books an d articles\, and a professor at UNC\, Duke\, William &\; Mary\, Virig ina Tech\, PSU &\; Pierce\, she has produced leading work on global d igital cultures. A leader in AI innovation and incubation\, she has spen t the past decade working across New Relic AI\, AWS AI\, Meta AI\, start ups\, and accelerators\, bringing new technologies into public and profe ssional life while advocating for responsible\, accessible\, deeply ethi cal use. \;\n \;\nThis is neither an AI sales pitch nor an apocaly pse sermon. It is a lively intervention into an overblown public convers ation. \;\n \;\nIt asks: \;\n \;\n- What is AI actually doin g now? \;\n \;\n- Which human relationships\, forms of labor\, jud gments\, and institutions is it rearranging? \;\n \;\n- Who gets t o build and govern it? \;\n \;\n- Who pays for its infrastructure? \;\n \;\n- Who can inspect\, interrupt\, challenge\, or repair wh at it does? \;\n \;\nThe answer is not to pretend risk has disappe ared. It is to recover agency as a shared public practice. \;\n \; \nA technology is not the same thing as a culture of use. \;\n \;\ nThe question is not only what AI can do. It is what kind of public we a re becoming while we learn to live with it. \;\n \;\nLearn more\, book me for a keynote or interview\, or get involved: https://notanai.si te\n\nTags: AI\, Artificial Intelligence\, ux\n\nImported from: http://c alagator.org/events/1250482713 URL:https://eventship.com/event/this-is-not-a-talk-about-ai-it-s-about-fi re-anthropology-technology-and-humanity SUMMARY:This Is *Not* a Talk About AI (It's About Fire\, Anthropology\, T echnology and Humanity LOCATION:Kiln: 1120 SE Madison St\, 1120 SE Madison S OR SEQUENCE:1 END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR