Presentation short abstract

This presentation interweaves philosophy, critical theory, and speculative fiction to offer a hopeful reimagining of symbiotic futures with AI. It investigates how a practice of kinship and affection towards biological species and machines enables transformative pathways for ecological flourishing.

Presentation long abstract

Technosymbiosis is a worldview that advocates for the harmonious co-evolution of humans and nonhuman species with AI. This presentation interweaves philosophy and critical theory of AI with speculative fiction to offer a hopeful reimagining of technosymbiotic futures. It investigates how a practice of kinship towards the nonhuman realms (of both biological species and machines) enables potentially transformative pathways for ecological flourishing. By seeking a world of nurture and care with these powerful nonhuman lifeforms, the possibilities of human existence can be transformed, and new forms of connection, preservation, and symbiosis made possible. The presentation will draw from feminist and Afrofuturist speculative fiction, which centres emotional relations between human and nonhuman life. It will use these images as an entry point to re-imagine the possibility of mutualistic human-AI-ecology relations.