"the nɘw is knowable"
"In this brief presentation I will illustrate several, closely related points. First, what makes our times so unusually interesting is that the vast majority of ideas that have stably organized human life are now no longer working. We are free to think anew. Second, contrary to what one usually thinks, the new is perfectly knowable. In fact, the new is a constrained space (or opportunity). Third, every company is a philosophical undertaking, whether the company is aware of it or not. Fourth, every company (and every government, really) urgently needs a philosophical research department). "
Tobias Rees
“Tobias Rees is founder of limn.ai
Limn is an AI studio dedicated to exploring the philosophical newness of AI: What possibilities does AI afford to us that simply didn’t exist before? How to build AI that is optimized to make these novel possibilities available in exciting and elevating ways to the maximum number of humans?
Prior to founding Limn, Rees was William Dawson Chair in the Faculty of Medicine at McGill University; Reid Hoffman Professor of Humanities at Parsons/The New School; Founding Director at the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles; and founder and CEO of ToftH School, a short lived but insightful attempt to build a new Bauhaus.
Rees also is a Senior AI 2050 Fellow of Schmidt Futures; a Senior Fellow at CIFAR; and an advisor to Google.
Rees work has consistently focused on two lines of flight.
The first one is the history of thought: The history of the categories that underlie how we think and that organize, without us being aware of it, how we humans understand and experience ourselves and the world.
The second line of flight is concerned with the difference today makes with respect to yesterday.
What, today, is so new that we cannot understand it in terms of the concepts and categories that we have inherited from the past?
Rees has written 7 books, over 50 articles, and is the recipient of multiple prizes and fellowships, nationally and internationally. His work appeared in the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, the NYT, Wired, NZZ, Vice, and more. He has worked as advisor to many European and North American Universities and Art Institutions and has a long history of collaborations with artists.”
