"Hello I’m Xinran Yuan, co-curator and producer of 7x7.

Although 7X7 has been engaging with issues around AI for over a decade, we decided this year that we had an opportunity, and maybe even a responsibility, to make it more central to the conference than ever.

As you know, the popular discourse around AI right now is pretty muddled. There is a lot of confusion, and anxiety, and uncertainty.

We ARE facing a lot of overwhelming and complex questions, and we don’t claim with this conference to be answering all those questions. What we ARE doing is expanding the fiscourse.

Although TALKING about these issues is important, there is also a kind of discourse that is possible only through the process of MAKING and doing something creative and exploratory across disciplines.

And that’s the kind of expansive discourse you are going to witness today. It’s what makes 7x7 unique amongst the many other conferences and conversations taking place around AI.

What I think our participants will demonstrate today is that we need MORE than just our intellect to address these big questions — we need to bring our full human experience to the table.

That includes our sense of humor and our sense of wonder. It includes our full embodied relationship to the world and our need for movement, for dance, for physical contact. It includes our desire for beauty and our desire for self-expression through image and sound and song. It includes all the things that make our lives messy and strange and difficult and worth living. To do this work, our participants have had to be generous, vulnerable, and courageous collaborators.

I want to end by thanking them for trusting the process and embarking on this unusual and whirlwind journey together.

Thank you."