AI Listening Machine: A New Science of Care and Creativity
An exploration into responsible AI for inclusive, imaginative, and caring futures, this talk introduces Listening Machine—an active AI participant that helps facilitate dialogue and debate for community and educational settings.
Developed through Electronic Life, a year-long public programme at Tate Britain (2023–24), Listening Machine is a custom-built AI interface that listens and responds with context-specific prompts designed to enrich and challenge dialogue.
Co-created with community partners through Tate’s Young People’s Programme, Listening Machine invites institutions to reflect on how they listen and who gets to speak, offering new ways to sustain inclusive and meaningful conversations.
We approach AI as a technique, not a tool to be consumed. Taking a critical, makerly approach, we call rigorous creativity: combining innovation and technical awareness with creative experimentation. AI becomes a medium for co-creation, not simply automation.
Project Leads, Ed D’Souza and Sunil Manghani, will present their talk with the live-running of Listening Machine, inviting the audience into a collective conversation about engaging dialogue, authorship, and cultural responsibilities. Together, we will ask:
- What lies beyond extractive uses of AI?
- Can machines help us reshape public institutions?
- What new alliances and forms of agency emerge when we extend the means to listen?
Join us to experience the Listening Machine in action and to imagine how AI might help shape more inclusive and inclusive futures.
