Are We Posthuman? (with N. Katherine Hayles and Claire Webb)

Relying on machines to coordinate our lives was just one step toward decentering humanity’s role in the world. Flights, banking, trade, food production... But as we start merging our actual decision-making with digital entities, exactly which pieces of humanity are we leaving behind? And how might we bring those pieces back? In this episode, famed posthumanist scholar N. Katherine Hayles makes the case that while AI is still wildly inefficient at the cognitive processes our biology has carefully perfected over millennia, we’re already irreversibly merged with it. Hayles has spent forty years at the intersection of science, tech, and literature, leading her to a radical interpretation of what it means to be human today: only as special as the organisms and machines we align ourselves with. Next up, she says, is those machines adopting the very analog processes that created them. Subscribe to the Berggruen Institute on YouTube to be the first to listen to new Futurology episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@Berggrueninst Catch up on the Futurology conversation with full episodes on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyYCSKWs8iYgjg-mhu-EuhTrG0-adrb0c Apple Podcasts https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/futurology/id1821718921 Spotify https://open.spotify.com/show/2I38HvHP6KlXrD5ysfygxk?si=XB2qyyGjT2ONMTd5XUKJAg&nd=1&dlsi=ac8cda6751834298 Mentioned in this Episode Books Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts — N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 2025) How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics — N. Katherine Hayles (University of Chicago Press, 1999) The Cosmic Web: Scientific Field Models and Literary Strategies in the Twentieth Century — N. Katherine Hayles (Cornell University Press, 1984) Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account — Gualtiero Piccinini (Oxford University Press, 2015) Parallel Minds: Discovering the Intelligence of Materials — Laura Tripaldi (Urbanomic, 2022) Solaris — Stanisław Lem (novel, 1961) Where to find N. Katherine Hayles UCLA English faculty page: https://english.ucla.edu/people-faculty/hayles-katherine-n/ Show ideas and feedback? Email: futurology@berggruen.org Learn more about the Berggruen Institute https://www.berggruen.org Follow Futurology! Instagram: / futurologypod Twitter/X: / futurologypod Tiktok: / futurologypod Facebook: / berggrueninst LinkedIn: / berggrueninst Bluesky: / futurologypod Credits Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney Theme Music: Marcus Bagala Audio Engineer: Aaron Bastinelli & Kyle Scott Wilson Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.

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We Can’t Prove We’re Conscious, Let Alone AI (with Geoffrey Lee and Grant Slater)

Machines are starting to act like humans. Does that mean they’re conscious? The problem is we haven’t been able to prove how or why humans are conscious yet either. So why would we be able to offer an...

15 Okt 1h 16min

Multispecies Democracy Now! (with Jonathon Keats and Grant Slater)

Democracy counts people, not plants. Humans are only a sliver of life on this planet, but today, we're the only ones who get a vote. What if we gave rights to rivers and standing to trees? In this e...

6 Okt 1h 37min

Let AI Have Intelligence. We’ll Keep Wisdom. (with Arianna Huffington and Dawn Nakagawa)

Somewhere around the Enlightenment we decided that thinking was what made us human. We built our schools, careers, and sense of worth at the altar of intelligence. Now machines are passing us on that ...

29 Sep 1h 4min

God Is In the Machine (with Kevin Kelly and Nils Gilman)

Technologists have feared (or prayed for) the singularity as a rapture-like inevitability for nearly 70 years. In an instant, they believed, our machine intelligence will overtake us and race ahead. K...

9 Sep 1h 40min

Gamble on Anything. Except Murder. (with Bobby Allyn and Grant Slater)

With prediction markets, gambling has gone ambient. To place your bets, you don't need to visit a casino floor, a racetrack, or your corner bookie. Now any uncertain thing on Earth could be the next b...

18 Aug 1h 16min

There's No Such Thing as a Free Agent (with Gillian Tett and Dawn Nakagawa)

One value proposition of AI is a personalized assistant at your fingertips. Every Average Joe can now have a “pocket pixie," the kind of perk once reserved for Hollywood stars and high-powered CEOs. B...

11 Aug 1h 7min

We're Winning the Race to Replace Ourselves (with Tristan Harris and Dawn Nakagawa)

The people racing to build artificial general intelligence tell us this rush to the future is inevitable. It reads like a forecast, but works like an alibi. If nothing can stop the race, then no one d...

4 Aug 51min