Intelligence is Corporeal—Rethinking Design Through the Body

Intelligence is inherently corporeal—the value functions of why we turn towards what is good (food! sex!) and away from what is bad (harm! death!) are deeply rooted in our embodied existence: our physical, emotional, and somatic ways of being in the world. Consequently, aesthetics and ethics, too, are corporeal, grounded in the lived realities of our bodily existence. The current wave of AI exists predominantly in the realm of language. While this realm is not entirely detached from materialities such as electricity and servers, it operates largely without the visceral stakes of life, living, and death that define our embodied experience. But what happens when AI begins to bridge this gap, embedding itself in and interacting with our corporeal bodies? How might this shift redefine the aesthetic and ethical implications of AI in our lives? Through exploring designs that come into close contact with our bodies, this talk invites a discussion on intelligence, meaning-making, aesthetics, ethics, and how we can design AI to support a good and meaningful life.