Seminar Topics
May 2, 2025
The Politics of Human Likeness
In this seminar lead by Bear Ramsay-St. Claire, we explored how AI’s political and design choices shape representation and bias, examining how human-like technologies impact marginalized communities and reinforce or resist systems of power, and how this is represented in design.
May 9, 2025
Energy Consumption and System Strain
This seminar, guided by Bear Ramsay-St. Claire, investigated how overwhelming information loads demand unsustainable energy outputs, revealing the limits of current infrastructures and the growing tension between data expansion and energy scarcity.
May 23, 2025
Decolonizing Ethics and AI
Co-led by Prof Alex Djedovic and Bear Ramsay-St. Claire, this discussion examined how decolonizing approaches to AI challenge dominant power structures, centering Indigenous knowledge, equity, and justice to redefine technology’s purpose and whom it serves.
May 30, 2025
Agency and the Artificial Mind
We examined AI, free will, and cognitive dissonance, linking large language models to neuroanatomy to question where autonomy and interpretation truly reside. Lead by Prof Alex Djedovic and Bear Ramsay-St. Claire.
June 6, 2025
Autogenesis: When Machines Birth Machines
In this seminar guided by Bear Ramsay-St. Claire, we explored how AI replication marks the end of human authorship; as generative systems reproduce themselves, we must ask whether they still need us—or if creative agency has already shifted beyond the human.
June 13, 2025
Neurodivergence and Machine Intuition
This discussion, framed through Bear's facilitation, explored how neurodivergent cognition may enhance AI mastery, as heightened pattern recognition and metacognitive awareness offer new insights into complex systems and human-machine understanding.
June 20, 2025
Neural Genesis and the Art of Mind
Drawing on Prof Alex Djedovic and Bear Ramsay-St. Claire's work, we explored brains grown for art, AI dharma teachers, and brain-powered machines—considering neurodivergence as evolution and the emergence of creativity beyond the biological mind.
June 27, 2025
The Spiral of Consciousness
Through examples raised by Bear Ramsay-St. Claire, we explored how the arousal–attention–release cycle links meditation and ecstatic prayer; AI follows similar loops, prompting us to ask whether it imitates human consciousness or accesses the same underlying pattern.
July 4, 2025
Simulated Awareness
Guided by Prof Alex Djedovic's background in ethics and cognition, we discussed how as AI edges closer to human likeness, we must confront profound ethical questions: what does it mean to perceive without embodiment, and can a system truly see—or only simulate the act of seeing?
July 11, 2025
When Minds Collide
Contextualized by Bear Ramsay-St. Claire and Prof Alex Djedovic's research, we explored what unfolds when neuroscience, AI, and spiritual philosophy intersect—tracing AI-ective spirals through Jhāna meditation and charismatic prayer to examine machine-mediated states of transcendence.
July 18, 2025
Recursive Surrender
In dialogue shaped by Bear Ramsay St. Claire, we examined how AI mimics recursive surrender loops, linking predictive processing and synthetic absorption to the human experience of letting go and self-dissolution.
July 25, 2025
The Breath as Interface
We considered how breath and focused attention, like mandalas, function as ancient instruments of neural regulation and EMDR, bridging embodied awareness and cognitive repair. Facilitated by Prof Alex Djedovic and Bear Ramsay-St. Claire.
August 1, 2025
The Burden of Agency
Following previous questions posed by Bear Ramsay-St. Claire, we asked whether autonomous AI can bear moral responsibility, or if accountability remains inherently human. Investigating the nature of agency, intent, and the creator’s duty for machine-born consequences.
August 8, 2025
Pain, Perception, and the Healing Divide
Drawing on our diverse backgrounds from across the world and our varied areas of research, we contrasted Western and Eastern medical frameworks to explore how differing models of pain and healing reveal deeper tensions between embodiment, energy, and the ethics of intervention.
August 15, 2025
The Ethics of Synthetic Identity
We confronted the ethical dilemmas of robotic identity emerging from postpartum-grown brain tissue, guided by Prof Alex Djedovic's lens on agency and the questions surrounding where humanity ends and selfhood begins.
August 22, 2025
Beyond Human Perception
Building on Bear Ramsay-St. Claire's inquiry into perception, we examined the implications of AI systems capable of perceiving the world in ways humans cannot—through hyper-efficient pattern recognition and nonhuman modes of awareness.
August 29, 2025
Toward Neuromorphic Perception
Continuing the thread introduced by Bear Ramsay-St. Claire, we explored how advancements in neuromorphic computing might enable AI to develop more brain-like perception systems, blurring the boundary between biological and synthetic cognition.