Everything humans do is a fiction until it is a fact: flying, space travel, communicating instantly across time and place, defying our own mortality. Acclaimed British author Jeanette Winterson argues that 200 years ago, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, was a message in a bottle, a prophesy, of today’s AI revolution.
The event The Art and Science of AI was recorded at the 2025 Sydney Writers’ Festival, in partnership with the University of New South Wales’s Centre for Ideas on 21 May 2025.
Speakers
Jeanette Winterson
Author, 12 Bytes: How artificial intelligence will change the way we live and love, Oranges are not the only fruit, and many more
Professor of New Writing at the University of Manchester
Toby Walsh (host)
Author, The Shortest History of AI: Six ideas to understand artificial intelligence today and more
Chief Scientist of AI, University of New South Wales
Fellow, Australian Academy of Science