淫妻社

What do artificial intelligence (AI) and zombies have in common? Find out when Dr. Gray Kochhar-Lindgren explores 鈥淚nfectious Machines: Humanities, Arts, and the Techno~Poetics of AI鈥� on Thursday, Oct. 23, at 淫妻社 (UAH), a part of The University of Alabama System. Presented by the UAH Humanities Center, this free public event begins at 6 p.m. in Morton Hall, Room 145.

Kochhar-Lindgren is the Humanities Center's Eminent Scholar Chair for the 2025-26 academic year. The author of nine books and numerous articles, he has taught at universities around the world and was previously Associate Vice Chancellor for Undergraduate Learning at the University of Washington's Bothell campus.

With each day鈥檚 news filled with stories of humans using or abusing AI and imagining its possibilities, everyone seems to be wondering about this technology and how it will affect their lives.

鈥淭hat鈥檚 one reason I wanted to do this particular kind of talk,鈥� Kochhar-Lindgren explained. 鈥淢y first slide is going to be a tsunami to represent how we鈥檙e all just being swept along with this thing.鈥�

His second reason aims for the larger heart of the matter.

鈥淎I is going to be inflected towards the humanities and the arts very directly, for many different reasons. I鈥檓 going to invite people to use this talk as an opportunity to think about their own love for their various disciplines and, more broadly, how their own intelligence works.鈥�

Kochhar-Lindgren emphasizes that he鈥檚 coming to this conversation as a philosopher and literary scholar, not a technical expert.

鈥淚 think we all need to be part of the conversation about what human capacities are engaged as we think together about AI.鈥�

Humans, of course, have been working with machines and pondering the relationships for centuries. Kochhar-Lindgren will offer a brief orientation.

鈥淚t's an incredibly complicated movement of ideas and technologies and materialities to get us to where we are now. I鈥檒l highlight a few thinkers in the early modern era and through the 20th century. I wrote a book in 2004 called 鈥楾echnoLogics,鈥� and so I鈥檝e been interested in related questions for a long time as a philosopher and literary person, always trying to think about what are these conjunctions of forces, these stories we are enacting? I鈥檒l also talk about what AI can do now in terms of creative work in the arts and humanities and highlight some possibilities of projects that people can work on together.鈥�

He will address a few thorny questions, too.

鈥淚t鈥檚 a combination of ethics and policy and these very perplexing philosophical and artistic and literary problems about resemblance and what鈥檚 genuine and what鈥檚 the simulacrum. That鈥檚 a very old problem, but it takes a very intensely new form now.鈥�

And then there鈥檚 the effect AI has or might have on the human mind.

鈥淢IT just came out with the results of an experiment about how AI creates cognitive drift and cognitive overload, which creates boredom and an atrophy of attentiveness, memory, and intellectual acuity. So, there鈥檚 that whole psychosocial, political thing that it decreases capacity for engagement. I won鈥檛 say much about that, but I think it has to be pointed to.鈥�

Ignoring AI, Kochhar-Lindgren believes, is a path we take at our peril.

鈥淚f we're not actively intersecting with AI thoughtfully, it might well create a new form of zombification.鈥�

Engage your brain with the UAH Humanities Center. Details about 鈥淚nfectious Machines: Humanities, Arts, and the Techno~Poetics of AI鈥� are available at the .