Public Lecture with N. Katherine Hayles

Join world-renowned scholar N. Katherine Hayles for Cognizing Subjects: Our Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts at ANU School of Cybernetics.

This thought-provoking lecture challenges human-centred views of intelligence, introducing the Integrated Cognitive Framework—a model that recognises cognition in humans, AI, and nonhuman life. Through case studies spanning microorganisms to large language models, Hayles explores how embracing ecological relationality can lead to flourishing futures for all species.

Hosted by Professor Chris Danta, this public lecture is supported by the Australian Research Council through the Future Fellowship Future Fables: Literature, Evolution and Artificial Intelligence. The session aims to spark fresh thinking on our place in the web of life, the future of AI, and what it means to thrive alongside our nonhuman symbionts. Don’t miss this opportunity to hear one of the most influential voices in science, technology, and literary studies, as she shares insights from her latest book Bacteria to AI.

Lecture abstract

Cognizing Subjects: Our Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts

Among the practices driving the planet toward ecological collapse is anthropocentrism, the belief that Homo sapiens is the species superior to all others.  Such ideas find support in the notion that humans are cognitively the most advanced. Crucial to bringing sanity, sustainability and ecological balance back, then, is a reassessment of cognition. The Integrated Cognitive Framework (ICF) proposes a relational definition of cognition as a process that interprets information in contexts that connect it to meaning. This definition opens cognitive practices as well as meaning-making to nonhuman lifeforms and to AIs such as Large Language Models. In developed societies, most of the work is performed by cognitive assemblages, collectivities of humans, nonhumans and computational media through which information, interpretations, and decisions flow. 

The broader context within which ICF operates is ecological relationality. Its implications are explored through case studies, including the cognitive capacities of microorganisms. The cognitive capabilities of computational media are explored through analyses of the architectures and textual productions of Large Language Models, specifically OpenAI’s Transformer models. Replacing liberal political philosophy with ecological relationality enables us to take responsibility without at the same time reinscribing human dominance, and for embracing choices that will lead to flourishing futures for humans and nonhumans.  

Biography

N. Katherine Hayles is the Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the James B. Duke Professor Emerita from Duke University.  Her research focuses on the relations of literature, science and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her twelve print books include Postprint: Books and Becoming Computational (Columbia, 2021), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017) and How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Univ. of Chicago Press 2015), in addition to over 100 peer-reviewed articles. Her books have won several prizes, including The Rene Wellek Award for the Best Book in Literary Theory for How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Literature, Cybernetics and Informatics, and the Suzanne Langer Award for Writing Machines. She has been recognized by many fellowships and awards, including two NEH Fellowships, a Guggenheim, a Rockefellar Residential Fellowship at Bellagio, and two University of California Presidential Research Fellowships. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her latest book is Bacteria to AI: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts, published by the University of Chicago Press in 2025.