AI & Society Monthly "Book" Club
Downstream Discussion Club
A discussion group for thinking about what AI means to society and what it’s doing to the world it's been released into - to the way we work, learn, connect, and the texture of everyday life.
Each session explores a different role AI is playing in our lives, and asks: is that the role we'd choose for it?
Relevant readings will be provided ahead of each reading, but are optional and joiners are welcome to just discuss guided questions during the sessions!
SESSION 3 (August) — AI as companion: connection, substitute, or something more unsettling?
What happens when AI moves into emotional territory — grief, loneliness, intimacy? There's a version of this that looks like a new kind of human tool for processing what's hardest about being alive. And there's a version that looks like AI quietly filling the space where other humans used to be. This session we'll sit with both, and ask what we actually want from the relationships in our lives — and whether AI belongs there.
Readings:
• "Ghosts" — Vauhini Vara, The Believer
• "AI Relationships: Why People Are Falling for Chatbots" — Built In
Please note this event is only open to AI Snack Club paying members. To join, sign-up here: aisnackclub.com