How to Give a Damn in the Age of AI w/ B. Scot Rousse
About the Event
The problem with artificial intelligence, according to philosopher B. Scot Rousse, is that computers don't give a damn. Machines can write, converse, and optimize, but they cannot care. And as AI takes over more of our work and weaves itself into every corner of our lives, will it also slowly erode our own human capacity to care, to commit, and to find things worth wanting in the first place?
In this talk, B explores what care actually is and how we might live and build technology in a way that protects our ability to give a damn. Drawing on a lifetime of drumming in punk bands, he argues that punk offers a surprisingly rich repertoire for meaningful life in the AI age:
Refuse the defaults, make things rather than consume them, celebrate experimental amateurism, do things for the pure joy of doing them, make space for play and a dash of controlled chaos, inherit traditions while remaking them, and belong to communities whose quality and very existence we experience as dependent upon us and that yet connect us with something bigger than and beyond ourselves.
Drawing on a lifetime of drumming in punk bands, B argues that punk itself distills a rich repertoire of skills that can enable us to live meaningful and engaged lives in the AI age and resist the compulsive optimization and automation pervading our culture.
What might the existential ethos of punk teach us about living and building technology without surrendering to compulsive optimization and automation?
After the talk, we'll break into small-group, salon-style discussions to dig into these ideas together, then come back as a full group to share insights.
Agenda
6:00 pm: Doors open
6:30–7:15 pm: Talk by B. Scot Rousse
7:15–8:00 pm: Small-group discussions
8:00–8:30 pm: Full-group conversation & closing
About the Speaker
B. Scot Rousse ("B") is a visiting scholar and lecturer in the UC Berkeley Philosophy Department and a visiting researcher at the Topos Institute. His work asks how AI is reshaping our capacities for judgment, care, and skilled expertise. A lifelong punk drummer, he writes about philosophy and AI at Without Why.