What are the links between hustle culture, land ownership and artificial intelligence? Come discuss these topics with us over tea and cake.

Hustle culture can be found in every corner of the internet. It includes influencers encouraging us to rise and grind, and social media posts that promote the idea of “living our best lives”. On the surface, this all seems fairly harmless. But if you have an inkling that it all might be a bit sus, you’re not alone.

Taking place at Turf Projects in the Whitgift Centre in Croydon and part of the Being Human Festival, we’ll be hosting an open roundtable discussion about the “culture of optimisation”. From a brief history of optimisation to the current forms of optimisation in digital technology and how it informs breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, we’ll examine optimisation and hustle culture through the lens of digital media. Suitable for anyone 16 years and older, you don’t have to have an opinion or know anything about optimisation or digital technologies to participate, just your curiosity, openness to new ideas and an appetite for cake. Because we’ll probably have cake.

Turf Projects at the Whitgift Centre in Croydon offers step-free access and flat and even floors in their workshop space. Their doors are double wide, with an ample amount of hard seating and a limited selection of soft seating. The Whitgift Centre offers gender neutral and accessible toilets. Guide dogs are welcome, and an Audio Frequency Induction Loop System is available on site. Please contact the organiser regarding specific access requirements.

This event is part of the Being Human festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities, taking place 10–19 November 2022. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. For further information please see beinghumanfestival.org.

This event is made possible with the generous support from the Consortium for the Humanities and the Arts South-East England (CHASE) AHRC funded Doctoral Training Partnership.