Who’s driving? AI, futurism and the city behind the wheel

Los Angeles has always been a testing ground for the future - a city where innovation, imagination and indigence share the same freeways and their constant crawl. For Peter Lunenfeld, professor of design media arts, that mix of optimism, veneer and the stark reality of socioeconomic disparities makes L.A. the perfect place to study how technology and culture intertwine.

Lunenfeld has spent his distinguished academic career examining how media and design act as a lens through which people understand and engage with the world. "The future seems to be with us right now," says Lunenfeld, calling this moment - featuring characters like anime-looking delivery robots, ethereal currencies, AI actresses and multiplying chatbot companions - both exciting and unsettling. According to the media theorist, few scenes capture this better than a driverless Waymo gliding past an encampment of the unhoused - a reflection of both technological promise and social disparity.

However, those expecting a roast of Waymos in Lunenfeld's upcoming Faculty Research Lecture might be surprised. "Waymos make better left-hand turns than most Uber drivers, and you can control your own music," says Lunenfeld, adding that he recently took his 87-year-old mother for a ride in one for her birthday.

During his lecture, "Future Street: Los Angeles in the Era of Artificial Intelligence," Lunenfeld will instead connect decades of scholarship in media theory, philosophy and the urban humanities to the rise and cultural impact of generative AI, exploring how Angelenos - from storytellers to technologists - shape global ideas about the future.

The lecture, which is UCLA's 139th installment in the series, will take place on Friday, Oct. 31, from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. at Schoenberg Hall. The lecture is free with registration.

Ahead of the Halloween day lecture, UCLA Newsroom spoke with Lunenfeld about what he considers the most pressing questions of this moment, including who gets to hold the reins of AI, and why technologies change rapidly, but people - and the power structures they build - rarely do.

Can you tease your lecture for audiences?

There's a concept that we make our tools and then our tools make us, and that has to do with the way we live in cities. I feel like, more than in quite some time, the future seems to be with us right now, and that can be both exciting and terrifying. The very heart of 21st-century apocalyptic imaginary is Los Angeles. We've been blowing up this city on celluloid and then on digital for over 100 years.

Two years ago, Elon University's Imagining the Digital Future Center asked where I thought AI was going, and I said that by 2040, it's going to have an impact on literally everything. Then I was much less concerned about AI taking over humanity than I was about the tiny sliver of humanity that was going to take over AI. And I still feel that. Oligarchic control of AI is going to be as dangerous and as deleterious to our mental health, civic health and our democracies as the oligarchic takeover that happened with social media.

So, I'm going to be talking about just how much AI, and our thinking about AI, is driven not by technologists, but instead by storytellers. L.A. is the center of the global storytelling universe! But for people, the city is either a utopia or it's an apocalypse. For lots of people in this country, it's the worst place they can imagine. They've been told that it's terrible (it's not - it's my adopted hometown, and I love it). I'm not going to lie, it's been a rough couple of years. But cities survive tough times. Cities get sacked by kings who live nearby. And cities come back. I believe in this medieval maxim that city air makes free right. I believe in cities, and that they are the economic and intellectual engines of our culture.

What do you hope attendees take away from the lecture?

That technologies aren't about the technological and that cities aren't just about place. Now is a fascinating moment to think about these interactions in Los Angeles. I'd like people to walk away rethinking their relationship to this city and rethinking their relationship to AI, and thinking about how both of those are as much mythical as they are actual.

I hope it will be a fun and lively experience for people, because it is taking place on Halloween day! Anyone who wants to wear a mask is free to - either to protect themselves from COVID-19 or to pretend that they are a Marvel superhero.

What excites you about sharing this research topic with a general audience in this moment in time?

This is a moment when what we are and what we do is under deep attack. I feel honored to be giving this lecture this quarter, because I think it's important to reaffirm the kind of work that gets done at a place like UCLA, and not only in things like Alzheimer's and cancer, neither of which will be cured if labs are shut down, but also the kind of work that I do, which I think is often harder for people to understand as research, but that I wouldn't have devoted my life to if I didn't think that it was meaningful, important and generative.

I've had many students go on to become faculty themselves - students who've gone off and done many things, and I feel proud of their successes. I'm a believer in what we do, and I hope that this talk will be a reminder that we can do all of that, and we can also explore new and interesting things. We don't have to wear our learning on our sleeves at all times to be pushing things forward.

What was your reaction to getting chosen to give this lecture?

Anxious pride, especially right now. I'm an institutionalist. My father was a historian. My mother taught in college. My wife has taught at UCLA, among other institutions. I believe in shared governance. I believe in the mission of the UC. I also believe that the greatest non-governmental generator of knowledge in the entire world is the University of California, and to be a part of that, even in the smallest way, has been a great pleasure for me.

So to be able to represent the arts and humanities and to try to speak to a larger public … I was so flattered.