AI & The Future of Humanity: Artificial Intelligence, Technology, VR, Algorithm, Automation, ChatBPT, Robotics, Augmented Reality, Big Data, IoT, Social Media, CGI, Generative-AI, Innovation, Nanotechnology, Science, Quantum Computing: The Creative Process Interviews

“It’s always very interesting that we have to make a case for art because we don’t have to make a case for fast food. Like, we don’t have to make a case for all of these sort of things in our lives that we do not need, and yet we have to make a case for beauty? We have to make a case for the soul? We have to make a case for humanity? We have to make a case for singing back the wounded world? That to me is fascinating”
My guest today is Ada Limón. She served two historic terms as the 24th poet laureate in the United States. She has brought poetry to public parks across the US, and her words have traveled through deep space, engraved on NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft. In over 20 years of writing in celebrated collections like Bright Dead Thingsand The Carryingand her new book, Startlement: New and Selected Poems, Ada has brought a sincerity to American poetry rooted in connection to the natural world.
She’s written with inspiring honesty about the death of loved ones, trying to conceive and also the unexpected liberation of deciding to step away from societal expectations of motherhood and embrace a life happily childfree. Her latest book on craft, Against Breaking: On the Power of Poetry, asks how a poem can hold our heaviest grief without letting the human spirit fracture.
After years living in Kentucky and New York, she bought back her childhood home in Sonoma Valley, stepping back into the rooms where her poetic imagination first took root. We’ll talk about the discipline of paying attention and why poetry remains an essential act of human survival.
(0:03) The Case for Beauty  
(0:39) About Ada Limón
(2:44) The Deepening of Roots
(5:01) Reading 'On Earth As It Is on Earth'
(6:08) Bearing Witness Without Surrendering to Grief
(7:50) The Definition of Beauty and the Dissolving Self
(9:41) Love as an Active Daily Choice
(11:11) The Practice of Loving-Kindness Meditation
(13:28) Reading 'Hell or High Water'
(17:01) Writing Without Music and Listening to the Landscape
(19:08) Dreams as Archetypes of Consciousness
(21:34) The Environmental and Creative Toll of Generative AI
(24:02) AI and the Future of the Arts
(25:21) Stewardship, Conservation, and Faith in the Invisible Workers
(28:14) The Childfree Daughter
(29:57) Listening to Trees as an Act of Reciprocity
(32:40) The Music of the World
(34:03) The Seed of Interconnectedness
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Algorithms are deciding whether you are eligible for a loan, a job, an apartment or insurance. They determine what you see online, who reads your social media posts and who connects with you on dating apps. They may even decide whether you get arrested or go to jail. Your very life hangs in the balance of prophecies.”
In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu talks with Carissa Véliz, an associate professor at the University of Oxford, about her new book, Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future—from Ancient Oracles to AI. Linking this work to her previous book, Privacy is Power: Why and How You Should Take Back Control of Your Data, Véliz writes: “ surveillance and prediction are digital technology’s original sins.”
In our wide-ranging discussion, we talk about how both massive and intrusive invasions of privacy at all levels of society and false claims to be able to predict the future erode democracy, are corrosive to ethics, and undermine people’s ability to think for themselves. Instead, we are conditioned to trust an unregulated band of “effective altruists” who claim to know better than we what kinds of lives we should prefer and the choices we should make. Véliz argues instead that we should embrace the uncertain to build resilience, to prepare for contingency but not be determined by what we cannot see, and to foster curiosity and imagination.
(0:00) Digital Technology's Original Sins
(3:46) How Books and Prophecies Choose Their Readers
(6:52) The Link Between AI, Mass Surveillance, and Profit
(9:48) Why Ethics Is the Hidden Foundation of Democracy
(14:53) The Future Tense as a Tech Executive Power Play
(17:21) Predictions as Speech Acts and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
(23:05) Artificial Intelligence as the Ultimate Bullshitter
(27:40) Effective Altruism, Utilitarianism, and the Dangers of Infinity
Episode Website
www.palumbo-liu.com
https://speakingoutofplace.com
Bluesky @palumboliu.bsky.social
Instagram @speaking_out_of_place

Emmy van Deurzen is a philosopher, a therapist and a pioneer who has spent five decades mapping the architecture of human existence. Born in the Netherlands and trained in the radical psychiatric wards of France, she came to London in 1977 to work alongside R.D. Laing, only to realize the anti-psychiatry movement had kind of lost its way. She decided to build something new. Today, she's the founder of the New School of Psychotherapy and Counselling and the leading voice of existential therapy in the United Kingdom and founded the Existential Movement.
Her work challenges the medical model of mental illness, suggesting instead that our crises are not diseases to be cured but philosophical crossroads to be understood. Her latest book is a distillation of that life's work. Beginning To Live: The Art of Existential Freedom is her first book written for a general audience, offering a guide on how to reclaim our freedom and find meaning in the face of suffering. Emmy van Deurzen, welcome to The Creative Process.
(0:00) The Paths to Freedom
(2:03) Emmy Van Deurzen, Philosopher, Existential Therapist, Author
(3:13) AI and Artificial Wisdom
(5:03) Practicing Freedom
(7:00) Finding Inner Peace Amidst the Ruins
(8:39) The Yellow Balloon
(11:17) Multilingual Roots, Language and Translation
(13:31) The End of One Love, The Beginning of a Love of the Arts
(16:11) The Art of Loving
(17:30) The Canvas of Life
(20:20) The Purified Essence
(27:46) The AI Dependency
(30:09) Radical Psychiatry, R.D. Laing and The Divided Self
(33:48) Awakening to Beauty
(37:18) The Art of Living and Existential Freedom
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

“Lincoln Center is multiple stages. I think probably over three dozen stages across 16 acres. It is a vast canvas in and of itself. And then we have this beautiful plaza that leads to this beautiful campus, and that’s the visual I think that most people have when they think of Lincoln Center is this beautiful fountain in the center and these three gorgeous buildings.It’s New York’s biggest plaza, and it feels very vibrant and beautiful. In the summer, we really take that plaza and we transform it into a dance floor. So this idea of also interrupting what people’s notion of Lincoln Center is because it’s a space that is very aspirational, which is a great thing.”
Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent sixteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.
(0:00) Reimagining Lincoln Center
(2:27) Art and the Human Experience
(4:40) The Curiosity of Childhood
(5:44) Alvin Ailey and the Pivot
(8:29) The Invisible Arts
(9:06) The Power of Public Theater
(17:03) Curation, Programming and the Art of Listening
(23:42) San Juan Hill and The Wall
(31:23) Art as the Oldest Technology
(35:02) globalFEST: Music and Connection
(38:20) Finding Universal Belonging
(41:20) The Gift of Pause
(54:27) A Collective Caretaking
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

"I really do believe that the arts are critical to how we move forward together, and live performance in particular, I think, is a way of us practicing how to move across our ideological boundaries and find one another and imagine these new worlds together and create together."
Shanta Thake is the Chief Artistic Officer at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—the nation's largest performing arts complex. Before stepping into this role, she spent sixteen years at The Public Theater, shaping the city's cultural landscape through Joe's Pub and expansive community initiatives. Today, she is tearing down walls—both the literal barriers separating Lincoln Center from its neighbors, and the figurative ones that dictate who belongs in our cultural spaces. She views the arts not as a luxury, but as essential civic infrastructure. We are pleased to have Shanta Thake to discuss her journey, the power of radical curation, and the future of public performance.
(00:01) Art as the Oldest Technology
(07:50) The Gift of Pause
(09:55) Reimagining Lincoln Center
(12:19) A Collective Caretaking
(12:56) The Curiosity of Childhood
(18:02) San Juan Hill and The Wall
(20:39) globalFEST: Music and Connection
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast