BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//RSVP//Portland startup events//EN X-WR-CALNAME:RSVP — This Is *Not* a Talk About AI (It's About Fire\, Ant hropology\, Technology and Humanity BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:This Is *Not* a Talk About AI (It's About Fire\, Anthropology\, Te chnology and Humanity DTSTART:20261002T000000Z DTEND:20261002T020000Z UID:rsvp-33@rsvp.local DESCRIPTION:When AI begins to feel uncanny\, dangerous\, or too powerful t o contain\, our cultural imagination reaches quickly for Frankenstein. \;\n \;\nThe comparison is everywhere in the current news cycle: a crea tion escapes its maker\, technology accelerates beyond human control\, and the world discovers too late that it has built something it cannot govern . The fear is not foolish. AI is moving rapidly into the systems that shap e work\, education\, media\, public services\, and democratic life. \;\ n \;\nBut Frankenstein offers a more interesting warning than the one w e usually tell. Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel was shaped by fascination with galvanism\, the early electrical experiments that made dead muscle appear to twitch. Its central horror is not simply that Victor Frankenstein crea tes something powerful. It is that he creates it and then abandons respons ibility for what follows. \;\n \;\nIn This Is Not a Talk About AI\, digital anthropologist Ali Maaxa\, Ph.D. asks what changes when we stop tr eating AI as an alien force with a destiny of its own and start recognizin g it as a human-built infrastructure. A system does not simply “take ove r.” It receives power through human decisions: whose data it uses\, who funds it\, what it is allowed to access\, which institutions treat its out puts as legitimate\, whose labor maintains it\, and whether people can cha llenge its decisions. \;\n \;\nThe story begins long before AI. \ ;\n \;\nNeanderthals made birch-bark tar with controlled fire to bind s tone tools to handles and hunting shafts. The Gutenberg Bible made authori tative texts reproducible at unprecedented scale and turned interpretation into a public struggle. Electricity extended the human day and television reorganized public attention. The internet promised open connection befor e becoming an infrastructure of platforms\, surveillance\, ranking\, and c oncentrated control. \;\n \;\nEach technology changed not only what people could do\, but what became normal. Each produced new anxieties\, ne w gatekeepers\, new forms of dependence\, and new struggles over who shoul d set the rules. \;\n \;\nAI belongs in that longer history. It is n ot “just like” fire\, print\, or electricity. It is faster\, more netw orked\, more opaque\, and increasingly able to generate language\, classif y people\, and act through connected systems. It also has a body: chips\, data centers\, electricity\, water\, land\, extraction\, invisible labor\, public subsidies\, and communities asked to absorb costs that rarely appe ar in a product demo. \;\n \;\nFor more than 20 years\, Dr. Maaxa ha s studied how people around the world encounter\, repurpose\, resist\, inn ovate with\, and make meaning around emerging technologies. As a researche r funded by Mellon\, Peacock\, REACH\, Wilgus\, and NEH\, an author of boo ks and articles\, and a professor at UNC\, Duke\, William &\; Mary\, Vi rigina Tech\, PSU &\; Pierce\, she has produced leading work on global digital cultures. A leader in AI innovation and incubation\, she has spent the past decade working across New Relic AI\, AWS AI\, Meta AI\, startups \, and accelerators\, bringing new technologies into public and profession al life while advocating for responsible\, accessible\, deeply ethical use . \;\n \;\nThis is neither an AI sales pitch nor an apocalypse sermo n. It is a lively intervention into an overblown public conversation. \ ;\n \;\nIt asks: \;\n \;\n- What is AI actually doing now? \;\ n \;\n- Which human relationships\, forms of labor\, judgments\, and in stitutions is it rearranging? \;\n \;\n- Who gets to build and gover n it? \;\n \;\n- Who pays for its infrastructure? \;\n \;\n- W ho can inspect\, interrupt\, challenge\, or repair what it does? \;\n&# 13\;\nThe answer is not to pretend risk has disappeared. It is to recover agency as a shared public practice. \;\n \;\nA technology is not the same thing as a culture of use. \;\n \;\nThe question is not only w hat AI can do. It is what kind of public we are becoming while we learn to live with it. \;\n \;\nLearn more\, book me for a keynote or interv iew\, or get involved: https://notanai.site\n\nTags: AI\, Artificial Intel ligence\, ux\n\nImported from: http://calagator.org/events/1250482713 LOCATION:Kiln: 1120 SE Madison St\, 1120 SE Madison S OR URL:https://eventship.com/event/this-is-not-a-talk-about-ai-it-s-about-fir e-anthropology-technology-and-humanity?utm_source=trulyrsvp&utm_medium=ref erral END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR