Principal's Conversation with Joanna Kavenna: Truth and fiction in the age of AI

Are we heading for an AI dream or an AI nightmare, or something else entirely? How do we ensure new technologies foreground human creativity and human lives? Who owns the future? In this Principal's Conversation, John Bowers KC and Joanna Kavenna will discuss questions around ethics, democracy and freedom in the AI Age, and the place of the creative arts in a reality that is (far) stranger than fiction. Joanna Kavenna is an award-winning novelist and essayist whose work probes the fault lines between technology, power, and the human mind. Named one of Granta’s Best British Novelists in 2013, her writing is known for its philosophical depth, dark wit, and imaginative range. Her previous novel, Zed (Faber 2019), offers a sharp, dystopian satire of big-tech authoritarianism and algorithmic control. Her latest novel, Seven (Faber 2026), is about a game without rules. It encompasses encounters with philosophy, AI and dreams, poetry and the natural world. The plot travels through time and space, in a world without boundaries and where nothing can be pinned down and everything is in flux. It raises questions about how much we can truly know about reality.