In Love with AI

Artificial Intelligences as personal and intimate figures is a recurring theme in popular culture. Consider the films Her and Ex Machina. This event will explore how representations of AI as intimate partners shape our perceptions of relationships. We will consider popular representations of AI, examine how they are envisioned in romantic contexts, and surface the gendered stereotypes that emerge in such narratives.

Speakers will discuss the acquisition of gendered stereotypes and the impacts of narrative choices. Following this, we will lead a workshop on rewriting AI narratives. All attendees will receive a Valentine’s Day Card! Additionally, attendees are invited to wear your favourite Valentine’s-themed outfits.

How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.

Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca

Maxine Lannuccilli 

Maxine Iannuccilli is a doctoral candidate and Public Scholar in the department of Psychology, focusing on gender stereotypes and how they influence behaviour. Her research aims to provide insights into gender disparities and inform interventions to mitigate societal gender biases.

Dimana Radoeva

Dimana Radoeva is an MA student in the INDI program working on a research-creation project combining the fields of medieval literature/history, computational arts, and interactive narrative game design. Her academic and creative work is focused on exploring ways in which the Old English epic can be deconstructed through an interdisciplinary, comedic, and experimental point of view.

Alisha Piercy 

Alisha Piercy is a fiction writer and visual artist in Tiotià:ke/Montréal in her second year PhD in Cultural Studies (Research-Creation) at Queen’s. Her research areas include hauntology, spectropolitics, claiming bad kin, Indigenous and non-western speculative/sci-fi worlding and Critical Animal Studies. In her doctoral work, in which theory interweaves with fiction, Alisha re-imagines the future through a series of creative “haunting” gestures. By centering spectral kinship and speculative worlding compositions as tools for ethnographic practice, she is exploring what it means to live with ghosts everyday in situated environments and across a plurality of dimensions, hoping to bring Indigenous and non-Indigenous hauntologies into conversation.

Workshop lead by: Kay Pettigrew

Kay Pettigrew is a writer, editor, musician, language justice worker, grassroots fundraiser and community arts facilitator. She is the recipient of the 2023 Editors Canada National Equity Fellowship and was voted Best Local Musical Entertainer in Xtra! Toronto (2009). A graduate of Concordia's English Literature and Women's Studies programs, Kay is interested in the intersections between language, literature, textuality and social justice. Kay has led poetry workshops on sexual health and HIV/AIDS, taught guitar and voice to youth at Montreal's Rock Camp, and developed arts-based train-the-trainer workshops for peer relationship educators. As a neurodivergent queer femme, Kay is endlessly curious about the interplay between disability and technology, and technology's potential as a tool to imagine/construct alternative realities and futures that help us build creative social justice movements. Her absolute favourite forms of writing are speculative fiction, science fiction, and magic realism.