Human technology Lecture Series: Creative Symbiosis: Designing AI That Grows With the Artist with Dr. Zafer Bilda.
Speaker
Dr Zafer Bilda
Agenda
12:00 - Introduction
12:05 - Talk
12:45 - Questions and answers
13:15 - Event ends
Synopsis
We have built AI that can generate a video or music in seconds but we have not built AI that advances with the person using it. Static tools like Photoshop make us more capable but never learn from us. Generative tools like Suno and Midjourney answer a prompt but don't understand context or intention, even if we spell it out.
This talk introduces creative symbiosis: a co-evolutionary relationship in which the artist and system learn from and shape each other over time. It draws on 33 interviews with 35 artists working with AI (www.creative-symbiosis.org). The argument is that temporality is the enabling condition.
Symbiosis develops through a consistent, mutual relationship, not a single session. If we keep designing AI as tools, we risk narrowing human creativity just as the technology becomes powerful enough to expand it. From a sociotechnical perspective, this raises a challenge of joint evolution: how can we design systems in which technical capabilities and human creative practices develop together rather than one simply adapting to the other?
About the speaker
Dr Zafer Bilda is a creative practitioner and researcher whose work spans two decades at the intersection of creativity, cognition, and technology. His PhD at the University of Sydney examined how architects use sketching and mental imagery as a medium for designing.
His postdoctoral research at UTS's Creativity and Cognition Studios produced the creative engagement model, a framework detailing how creative relationships develop between participants and systems. He co-founded an AI-powered video platform, works as a design consultant on human-centred AI, and creates his own music with AI.
His current project, Creative Symbiosis, is based on interviews with 35 international artists and is becoming a book.
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This event is brought to you by: Sociotechnical specialist group
