Technology Rewriting Us: Ancient Tech, AI & the Future of Being Human

Talks on Tuesdays is a live event series bringing big ideas, real experts, and curious minds together - at your favourite local venues. Think thought-provoking lectures, audience questions, and post-talk mingling over drinks and dinner.

This isn’t a uni lecture. It’s a social, intelligent night out.Come alone or with friends, leave with something to talk about.

Event Schedule:

6.30pm Arrival & Doors Open

7pm Lecuture Starts

7.45pm Q&A

8pm Talk Concludes

8.30pm Event Closes.

*Please arrive close to 6.30pm

A La Carte menu and full bar available throughout the night - pay as you go.

Your Topic:
Technology Rewriting Us: Ancient Tech, AI & the Future of Being Human

In this talk, I tell the story of an ancient technology that drastically changed how people thought, learned and organised their societies, and ask whether artificial intelligence is about to do the same. AI is often accused of making us more stupid, but the real question is: what kind of stupid is it making us, and might that actually be good for humanity? Drawing on my work teaching a university philosophy unit on AI versus organic intelligence, and my background in psychology and AI ethics, I explore how everyday uses of AI are already reshaping how we think and what we know. This is a session for curious sceptics and cautious optimists who would rather wake up to what AI is doing to us than sleepwalk into someone else’s future.  

Your Speaker:

Dr Peter Brace is an educator, philosopher, and researcher whose work sits at the heart of how humans think, learn, and adapt in an age of artificial intelligence. He teaches at Swinburne University across Critical Thinking and Intelligence, AI and cognition, and Criminology and Ethics, bringing a combination of cognitive science, moral philosophy, and practical application to some of the questions that matter most in today’s world.

And as founder of PsychSafety Asia-Pacific, Peter works with organisations across Australia and the Asia-Pacific region on the human consequences of AI adoption, with a particular focus on what happens to learning, judgment, and meaning-making when machines begin to do our thinking for us. He is the author of Practical Psychological Safety in Asia-Pacific and has spent over four decades studying how people and institutions learn, grow, adapt, and sometimes fail to.

Peter believes that large language models, to borrow Walt Whitman's words, contain multitudes, and carry with them the potential for both great harm and great benefit to human society. The work of education, he argues, is learning to tell the difference.