This talk examines how Black artists transform AI from a tool of command and control into a medium for intergenerational dialogue and alternative worlding. Drawing on Black critical theories of affect, genealogy, and cognition, we’ll explore how Stephanie Dinkins’s artwork points toward the sociality of “unruly intelligences”—forms of knowing that subvert calculative logic and are not reducible to conventional artistic intuition. Such Black counter-speculative practices offer durable alternatives to Silicon Valley’s dystopian futures, if they are pursued at the intention, pace, and scale their nurture requires.

Tavia Nyong’o is a William Lampson Professor of American Studies; Black Studies; Performance Studies; and Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies at Yale University.

Sponsored by the American Studies Program, Sociology Department, English Department, Africana Studies Program, and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty.

This event is free and open to the public.