[In-person] Curiosity Café: AI and Authenticity (Ticketed Event)

AI can generate videos, poems, songs, and artworks that seem frighteningly similar to what human beings can make (just look at the image on our event poster...). One might even argue that the AI-generated versions are in some respects better than their humanmade counterparts — they are done much faster, may contain fewer visual blemishes or grammatical mistakes, and might even capture an artist’s values or vision better than the work they can make with their own hands. Many people also use AI to assist, rather than replace, human effort — to edit a draft, to do preliminary research, to exchange and refine ideas before they are committed to the page.

But what does the involvement of AI mean for what we might call the “authenticity” of such creations? Consumers of art, for example, have often cared deeply about whether a work of art is "authentic" — whether, say, it is a sincere and uncompromised expression of the artist's vision or worldview, or whether it was in fact the artist's creation rather than an impressive forgery.

At our next Curiosity Café, moderated by Zachary Grey and Adrian Ma, we will explore the hotly debated relationship between AI and creative authenticity, asking:

• What does it mean for a creation to be authentic?
• Is authenticity meaningful or valuable? Why?
• Is using AI meaningfully different from outsourcing work to another human being?
• Can AI produce creations that are more authentic than what we create ourselves?

Join us on Tuesday, April 15th for a collaborative and authentically human discussion on these questions and many others!

Space is limited! Please obtain a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket from Curiosity Café here to attend this event. See the ticketing page for more info about tickets and other options including a limited number of free tickets. Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30pm. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle.

Hope to see you there!

__________________________________________________________________________

This event is brought to you by Being and Becoming, a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us.

By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences.

Find out more about Being and Becoming here.

About the Curiosity Café Series:

For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.