PIRT Salon: Planetary Scale Intelligence, Alasdair Milne

​This session looks to emerging theories of planetary-scale intelligence. What are the philosophical implications of ideas such as collective intelligence, Gaia Theory, Global Workspace Theory, and other theories which expand cognition beyond the human scale?

​We will discuss the compatibility of human-scale concepts such as ‘thought’ ‘cognition’ and ‘consciousness’ with planetary-scale computation, and consider the role of art practice in investigating how these ideas might fit together.

​This is the reading for this session: https://aprja.net//article/view/140442/184380

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​This session will be led by Alasdair Milne. Alasdair’s work focuses on the collaborative systems that artists build around new technologies. As part of Serpentine’s Creative AI Lab he studies how machine learning is increasingly integrated into artistic workflows, becoming part of broader and more complex systems of tooling.

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​Previous Topics Have Been:

​The Differences and Similarities Between Traditional Religious and Secular Ideologies, Digital Immortality, Humanism vs PostHumanism vs Transhumanism, The Sociology and Ecology of LLMs, Novascene — James Lovelock, The Cyborg Manifesto — Donna Haraway

​Future Topics Will Be:

​Kevin Kelly — What Technology Wants, Edward Lee — The Co-Evolution, Nick Land — Acclerationism, Xenofeminism

Biases of the PIRT (Political Ideology Religion and Technology) Salon Are As Follows:

​Be as concrete and specific as you possibly can, attempt to provide evidence as much as possible, be wary of generalization, be cosmopolitan in your analysis if you can, avoid the theoretical, point to concrete phenomena and objects in the world, focus on political and economic actors if possible, feelings and intutitions and intuitive hypothesis are also welcome but call them out as such, irony and humor are welcome.