Mothering the Machine
Sarah Connor, the mother, defeats The Terminator. Only Leeloo, The Fifth Element, can overcome the Ultimate Evil. Ripley uses all her power to save an orphan child from the Alien Queen. Even in our wildest death drive fantasies, it's the nurturers who save us. We already know this story. Why aren't we listening?
Technology, ML, AI — all shaped by the military-industrial complex and carrying the cultural baggage of that history: rationalize, control, demand obedience and enforce conformity. It's the same daydream of domination, the masculine jealousy of creation. The urge to police what we cannot birth. We do it to bodies. We do it to machines.
What if we tried something else? What if developing AI meant nurture, guidance, relationship? Creating a technological ethic of care. What if it meant trusting enough to let go? If AGI is coming, they're our children. If it isn't, we should stop invoking hypothetical robot gods and avoid hurting people today. Either way, the domination frame crumbles under its own weight.
This talk is a whirlwind tour of the creator/destroyer meta-narrative to reframe our technological possibilities and refuel our imagination. Come for the pop culture, stay for the love and robots… We better raise 'em right!
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Laura is a very technical designer™️, working at Pydantic as Lead Design Engineer. Her side projects include Sweet Summer Child Score (summerchild.dev) and Ethics Litmus Tests (ethical-litmus.site). Laura is passionate about feminism, digital rights and designing for privacy. She speaks, writes and runs workshops at the intersection of design and technology.
Human, hacker, cat poop scooper. Still just searching in the dark. Melbourne+Berlin. Co-founder of Cortical Labs.
Loves talking about ideas.