Join us for a fireside chat to explore AI's incursions into poetry, from the ethical concerns to the artistic affordances. We will consider the ability for AI to produce gendered creations, the possibility of outsourcing creativity to machines, the productivity of failure, and AI's capacity to help cure writer's block.

This talk is inspired by the gift of a painted work given to St John's College. This piece, entitled Shattered Space, was created by the humanoid AI robot, Ai-Da, who is now being programmed to produce poetry. Shattered Space is currently displayed in conversation with four busts of St John's College's famous literary alumni: Philip Larkin, Robert Graves, John Wain, and Seamus Heaney. What can we draw from the 'conversation' initiated by this method of display?

Our exploration will be guided by poet and PhD candidate Janel Pineda (Marshall 2019), Professor of creative writing and poet Christina Thatcher (Marshall 2009), and DPhil candidate and Alan Turing Institute researcher Hannah Rose Kirk

This event will take place in the Mark Bedingham Room in the St John's Study Centre. We will follow our discussion with a wine reception in the beautiful Canterbury Quad.

This is an event hosted by The Arts at St John's College, Oxford in partnership with the Association of Marshall Scholars and the Oxford TORCH Institute for Ethics in AI.

Organiser: Olivia Holder (Marshall 2020) arts@sjc.ox.ac.uk