Sustainable AI Conference 2025 | Benedetta Brevini | The Values of an Artificial Society

Sustainable AI Conference 2025 - Shaping Sustainable AI and its Futures

"The values of an Artificial Society"
Keynote by Prof. Dr. Benedetta Brevini
University of Sydney, Australia
London School of Economics and Political Science, United Kingdom


TIMELINE
00:00 Introduction by Aimee van Wynsberghe
02:12 Keynote Benedetta Brevini
29:35 Begin Q&A
30:06 Q by Dodzi Koku Hattoh
31:17 A by Benedetta Brevini
34:08 Q by Dodzi Koku Hattoh
34:39 A by Benedetta Brevini
35:58 Q from the audience
38:04 A by Benedetta Brevini
44:08 Q by Federica Lucivero
46:08 A by Benedetta Brevini
47:52 Q by Dirk Lanzerath
49:14 A by Benedetta Brevini
52:40 Q by Gry Hasselbalch
54:17 A by Benedetta Brevini
59:13 Q from the audience
59:33 A by Benedetta Brevini
1:00:14 Q by José Renato Laranjeira de Pereira
1:01:04 A by Benedetta Brevini
1:02:26 Ending


ABSTRACT
As we witness the relentless rise of AI capitalism, we may well ask: “What does sustainable
AI look like” and “How can we make AI more sustainable? In this talk, Brevini invites us to
reverse the question. If AI is “always in a full sense social” (Williams 1981) then our
intellectual focus should be reversed to ask: What kind of society can be sustained with AI?
What are its defining characteristics?


Following Gramsci, Fordism was never just about factories and modes of production. It was
about generating new cultural logics, subjectivities, values and social norms; it was about
how people could imagine themselves. While the “AI revolution” is still incomplete, the
discourse around AI is already shaping our values. Rather than simply infusing, to borrow
from Weber, an “AI spirit” into the fabric of society, our priority should be to understand
the foundational values of the society we are creating.
Brevini names this emerging social order the Artificial Society: one that celebrates illiteracy,
disregards human knowledge and expertise, rewards self-censorship, represses dissent,
values creativity theft and fails to confront the climate emergency. She urges us to question
the Artificial Society with urgency because only by doing so can we begin to imagine another
way forward that reasserts a wider (and sustainable) new horizon for human beings.


ABOUT THE CONFERENCE
How can we live in a world marred by constant changes and crises of all scales and magnitudes? Against the backdrop of social transformations and upheavals as well as climate crises and ecological catastrophes, we must investigate how technologies support the good life for all humans and other living entities. Is this a realizable goal or does it remain a utopian dream?

While the answer to this question remains open, the concept of “Sustainable AI” picks up on the underlying desire. It fosters AI applications for sustainability while recognizing the negative sustainability impacts of these very applications. In framing "Sustainable AI" we include environmental, societal, and economic aspects.

The concept of “Sustainable AI”, however, remains a fuzzy one, covering a multitude of different meanings. Questions arise concerning the objective, the scope, the scale, and the very definition of the notion. For example: What is and what needs to be sustained when developing and implementing AI systems? Do “sustainability” and “AI” have the same meaning across the majority and the minority world? And, since different current changes and crises are global in nature but play out locally, how does "Sustainable AI" fit within the tension between the global and local? With an eye towards the future, there is a dire need for approaches across disciplines to find answers to these and other pressing questions.

In addition to this conceptual unclarity, also methodological questions need to be addressed: How should we approach “Sustainable AI”? What disciplines, traditions, methodologies, or schools of thought offer helpful insights? Do we rely on mainstream scholarly traditions, or do we reinvigorate traditions that have been pushed to the perimeter? And where exactly should we turn our regard? To the past or the future? To the most affected or the most responsible? To problems or solutions?