Creative Comm 21
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Alex May spoke about Cyberspecies Proximity at Creative Comm 21, a knowledge exchange conference hosted by the National Centre for Creativity enabled by AI.
Alex May spoke about Cyberspecies Proximity at Creative Comm 21, an annual knowledge exchange conference hosted by the National Centre for Creativity enabled by AI (CebAI). Held online on 13 September 2021, the event brought together speakers and panels around technology, creativity, ethics, human-computer interaction, business, and knowledge exchange.
May’s contribution formed part of the session Ethics, AI & the 4th Industrial Era, alongside Ghislaine Boddington and Bunmi Durowoju. Using Cyberspecies Proximity as the case study, he addressed how robotic systems enter shared social space and how questions of design, behaviour, and perception become ethical as soon as machines begin to move among people rather than simply operate around them.
That made the conference a strong fit for May’s wider practice. Cyberspecies Proximity is not only a robotics project but also a way of making social assumptions about automation visible. In the context of CebAI’s programme, the work became a practical example of how creativity can test the cultural and human consequences of AI rather than merely illustrate its technical promise.