What would it mean to rethink the human beyond the limits of colonial modernity? How must we, as Frantz Fanon called us to do, “turn over a new leaf”? This conversation brings together Nelson Maldonado-Torres and Felwine Sarr to explore the possibility of a planetary humanism grounded in decolonial thought.

Is artificial intelligence going to take over the world? Have big tech scientists created an artificial lifeform that can think on its own? Is it going to put authors, artists, and others out of business? Are we about to enter an age where computers are better than humans at everything? Emily Bender and Alex Hanna offer a sharp, witty, and wide-ranging take-down of AI hype across its many forms.

When we gave algorithms power over our world, we hoped that the apparent neutrality of machine thinking would create a more egalitarian age. Yet we are more divided than ever, staring down threats to democracy itself. In this event, Colin Koopman will argue that data technologies fail us so often because we built them around a deficient notion of equality and discuss novel methods for realizing democratic equality in a digital age.

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Jonathan C. Williams proposes a new way of thinking about melancholy in the 18th century: as the language of melancholic social criticism, a solitary protest against exploitative features of social life. Attention to melancholic expression reveals resonances not only to medical, religious, poetic, and philosophical language, but also between 18th-century thinkers and our own historical moment.