Events displayed in timezone: Europe/London
Keynote: Racing Towards a Wasted Future: Generative AI and the Resurgence of Nuclear Energy (Dr. Marco Seiferle-Valencia)
Wed May 14, 2025 @ 6:00 pm - 7:00 pm BST
As the potentials and promises of generative AI sweep into the field of Open Education, educators and advocates have a holistic responsibility to think deeply and expansively about the known and still emerging environmental impacts of these technologies. Demand for energy by the hungry server farms that create so-called artificial intelligence is bringing damaging and dangerous energy practices back from the grave, including the resurrection of previously shuttered coal and nuclear power plants. How can we as Open practitioners reconcile the long standing historical and contemporary violence of coal and nuclear power production with the desire to widely embrace and experiment with generative AI? This talk will review the most recent research on AI energy demands and the environmental impacts, as well as provide a brief history and contextualization of the current issues with nuclear waste, pollution, and accidents in North America, primarily in the United States and Canada. Attendees will be invited to reflect deeply on what we stand to lose and gain with the widespread adoption of generative AI in society, and hopefully leave inspired to mindfully use generative AI, with its current promise and future perils in mind.
Speaker bio:
Dr. Marco Seiferle-Valencia serves as Associate Professor and Open Education Librarian at the University of Idaho. His research interests span a wide range of topics, notably community archives, the history and current practices of BIPOC feminisms especially in libraries and information environments, and environmental justice. Marco is also a co-creator of the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Collective, which collects imperiled histories of Chicana civil rights activism.
Date: Wednesday, May 14, 2025
Time: 11:00am – 12:00pm
Time Zone: Saskatchewan Time (CST)
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