Top 10 AI Speaker Douglas Rushkoff: Being Fully Human in the AI Future
Should we optimize humans for AI? Or can we optimize AI for humans? Douglas Rushkoff witnessed digital technology like the internet emerge from the most creative side of the California counterculture—only to be subsumed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and turned against humanity. He argues that we need to set the agenda on AI today to ensure that it doesn’t run away with us but becomes a powerful tool for unleashing human potential. A top AI technology speaker and bestselling author of Team Human and Program or Be Programmed, Douglas was named by MIT as one of the 10 most influential intellectuals in the world. “If we keep going in this direction, we will be living at the mercy of our programs,” he tells Lavin. “But AI also gives us a way out—a way to foster a new human-centered digital society. Do we dare?”
What does Douglas speak about?
Rather than replacing human creativity, appropriately developed AI can augment human imagination and expression, Douglas argues. Instead of substituting for human relationships, AI can help foster collaboration and compatibility. Instead of doing students’ homework for them, AI can challenge them to do deeper analysis and dig for deeper insights. But “this all depends on our understanding of what makes humans fundamentally different from machines, and our willingness to embrace the novelty that comes from human actors working together toward human aims.”
In smart, hilarious talks delivered with his trademark charisma and energy, he breaks down how AI works, what it threatens if we turn to it for the wrong things, and how we can turn AI to work for humans, rather than the other way around. He draws on his multiple bestselling books and his decades of experience advocating for human autonomy in a digital age, challenging us to create the future we want: one that is still very much in our control to produce.
“Rather than repressing human agency, AI can unleash the creative potential of our organizations, if we dare,” he says.
Who is Douglas?
A “passionate visionary on the side of the angels” (Kurt Anderson, Evil Geniuses), Douglas has spent his prolific career revealing how media and technology are impacting culture, business, and the economy. He’s the bestselling author of 20 books, including Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, and his most recent, Survival of the Richest. This top AI technology speaker has been a foremost voice on tech, media, and social justice for years—he even coined concepts like “viral media” and “social currency.”
His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and he was honored with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. Douglas has made many media appearances, including his Frontline documentaries Generation Like, about teens and social media, The Persuaders, about the arms race between marketers and the public, and The Merchants of Cool, about who really drives youth culture. He serves as a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics.
How do I learn more about Douglas?
Interested in learning more about this top AI technology speaker? Get in touch with us at our Contact Us page, read more about Douglas and our other top AI speakers, or watch his TED Talk on fostering human solidarity in the digital future:
What does Douglas speak about?
Rather than replacing human creativity, appropriately developed AI can augment human imagination and expression, Douglas argues. Instead of substituting for human relationships, AI can help foster collaboration and compatibility. Instead of doing students’ homework for them, AI can challenge them to do deeper analysis and dig for deeper insights. But “this all depends on our understanding of what makes humans fundamentally different from machines, and our willingness to embrace the novelty that comes from human actors working together toward human aims.”
In smart, hilarious talks delivered with his trademark charisma and energy, he breaks down how AI works, what it threatens if we turn to it for the wrong things, and how we can turn AI to work for humans, rather than the other way around. He draws on his multiple bestselling books and his decades of experience advocating for human autonomy in a digital age, challenging us to create the future we want: one that is still very much in our control to produce.
“Rather than repressing human agency, AI can unleash the creative potential of our organizations, if we dare,” he says.
Who is Douglas?
A "passionate visionary on the side of the angels” (Kurt Anderson, Evil Geniuses), Douglas has spent his prolific career revealing how media and technology are impacting culture, business, and the economy. He’s the bestselling author of 20 books, including Present Shock, Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus, and his most recent, Survival of the Richest. This top AI technology speaker has been a foremost voice on tech, media, and social justice for years—he even coined concepts like “viral media” and “social currency.”
His book Coercion won the Marshall McLuhan Award, and he was honored with the first Neil Postman Award for Career Achievement in Public Intellectual Activity. Douglas has made many media appearances, including his Frontline documentaries Generation Like, about teens and social media, The Persuaders, about the arms race between marketers and the public, and The Merchants of Cool, about who really drives youth culture. He serves as a research fellow of the Institute for the Future, and founder of the Laboratory for Digital Humanism at CUNY/Queens, where he is a Professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics.
How do I learn more about Douglas?
Interested in learning more about this top AI technology speaker? Get in touch with us at our Contact Us page, read more about Douglas and our other top AI speakers, or watch his TED Talk on fostering human solidarity in the digital future:
https://youtu.be/Is1YUQVYkvY?feature=shared
