We often perceive Large Language Models (LLMs), like ChatGPT and ClaudeAI, as anthropomorphized chatbots: a framing that greatly limits how we understand and imagine their capabilities. Hidden within what appears as traditional text conversation lies a massive network of relationships between words, full of unexpected disjunctions and diverse knowledge systems. How can we change how we look and think about LLMs in order to empower their full potential, and to interrogate their ethics?  

On December 7 and 8, join us as at UKAI in Downtown Toronto, where we bring together fiction writers, artists, academic researchers exploring new ways to think about LLMs through the creative use of metaphor. Artists will be encouraged to think beyond traditional and clichéd presentations of Artificial Intelligence—as robots, disembodied brains, and glowing blue balls—and imagine alternative emerging metaphors, like data biomes, looms of language, fuzzy JPEGs of the Internet, or whatever their particular artistic practice or culture may call for.

In January, we will celebrate the ideas and achievements of our participants through an interactive, multi-modal gallery event - and we hope to see you there, too!