Past Events

Join distinguished scientist and pioneering biologist Michael Levin and Future of Being Human initiative Director Andrew Maynard for a conversation around Michaels ground breaking work and thinking on organ regeneration, “bodyplan” redesign, engineering proto-organisms, and more.

MARCH 11 (ASU Tempe Campus): How might posthuman and Afrofuturist configurations contribute to a conversation about the spaces we humans call “home” from our deep pasts to our deep futures?

Join Emmy-winning writer, producer, actress and broadcast host Tamara Krinsky and writer and director Taryn O’Neill, and Future of Being Human initiative Andrew Maynard, as they explore the power of story telling, filmmaking, and Hollywood in building better futures.

Join bionic pop artist, musician, and future-thinker Viktoria Modesta and Future of Being Human initiative Director Andrew Maynard in a wide ranging conversation on art, performance, imagination, augmentation, and what it might mean to be human in a technologically advanced world.

Could research on interspecies cooperation transform how we think about living with advanced artificial intelligence in the future?  Join us for a live streamed conversation on Future of being Human … Unplugged between Athena Aktipis (Arizona State University), Mark Daley (University of Western Ontario), and host Andrew Maynard, as we explore how the emerging science of cooperation sheds light on how we might think about our relationship with AI in the future.

Could AIs develop a sense of self and an inner world – and should this concern or excite us? Compelling conversation with Mark Daley (University of Western Ontario), Blake Richards (McGill University), and host Andrew Maynard, exploring the cutting edge of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and where current developments may be leading us.

NOVEMBER 1, 2023 Join us for an in-person Future of Being Human meetup at 4:00 PM on Wednesday November 1 on the ASU campus in Tempe, where we’ll be discussing the potential challenges of political bias in ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms, and what this might mean for democratic processes decision making, and even AI-mediated learning.

OCTOBER 20. What if time were not three-dimensional but two – memory and forgetting rather than past, present, and future? Join writers and researchers from around the world as we explore African ways of understanding time and what it means to our collective futures!

OCTOBER 21. Join the three cohosts of the podcast Griots and Galaxies and one of the featured authors in hearing how stories of time travel, epic fantasy, androids, and aliens can reckon with the legacies of colonialism and inspire transformative futures

OCTOBER 4, 2023 Join us for an in-person Future of Being Human meetup at 3:00 PM on Wednesday October 4 on the ASU campus in Tempe, where we’ll be exploring how emerging advances and capabilities around AI could transform the university of the future — or even whether there will be universities in the future!