Livescu NNAI at UCLA

Overview

Aims, People, Projects and Publications, Curriculum,Promotion and Outreach,The Future, Fundraising, Revenue and Costs

Aims

Changing conversations about thinking.

Thinking, humanities forward

• Engineers, scientists, corporations and states are driving unprecedented changes in human and non-human thought.
• How will humans make sense of these changes?
• Humanities research encompasses thousands of years of thought, writing, invention and critique across multiple global civilizations
  • Can we make it part of the discussion in a meaningful way?
  • Can we synthesize all this expertise to make sense of AI, consciousness and thinking?

Expert engagement and "horizontal innovation"

• NNAI centers expertise, erudition and collective research.
• Our goal is to bring different forms of erudition of into deep engagement with each other
• To enhance erudition (to innovate) "horizontally" instead of "vertically".
  • Finding surprising opportunities, not just next steps

Working around the university

• "Around" in two senses
  • All around the university: Every kind of expertise is potentially a resource for horizontal innovation.
  • Create "work-arounds" to existing incentives that block horizontal innovation in favor of narrow metrics of productivity and individual impact
• Horizontal innovations are only possible in sustained collaborative environments for deep engagement across very different forms of erudition.

Connecting beyond the university

• NNAI recognizes that expertise and erudition in the humanities is dispersed across the planet, and aims to leverage UCLA's faculty networks to change the conversation here as well as elsewhere.

People

NNAI is People!

Christopher M. Kelty

• Director and Professor, Institute for Society and Genetics, Department of Anthropology
• 2022-2028

Marcos Arranz

• Academic Coordinator
• Hired Spring of 2024
• Oversees all events, budgets, programming, and undergraduate researchers and employees

Amisha Gadani

UCLA undergraduate researchers

• Christabell Marbun, UCLA Senior, Philosophy
• Isaac Lee, UCLA Sophomore, Computer Engineering
• Claudia Bloom, UCLA Sophomore, Philosophy
• Isabella Yuan (2024-5), ISG
• Chaya Manjeshwar (2025-5), ISG

Postdoctoral Scholar, TBD

• [Applicants under review Jan 2026]

The Board of Livescu NNAI

• Pamela Hieronymi, Professor, Philosophy
• Sarah Kareem, Associate Professor, English
• Rachel Lee, Professor, Asian-Am and Institute of Society & Genetics
• Felix Schweizer, Professor, Neurobiology (Medical School)

• Daniel Snelson, Associate Professor, English and Design Media Arts

Key Support at the Institute for Society and Genetics

• Dean of Life Sciences Tracy Johnson
• Chair of ISG Aaron Panofsky
• ISG Staff Seven McKinney (CAO), Nancy Corona (Office Manager), Nadine Guzman (HR) assist with financial and organizational issues
• Frenz Cabison and Elena Allen (SAOs) assist with undergraduate courses and student relations

Projects and Publications

Workshops, Special issues, Books

Can Humans Think?

The internet we could have had

Publication

Reflections on Redefining Intelligence

Publication

• Christopher M. Kelty
  • https://hdsr.mitpress.mit.edu/pub/qajxfjb6/release/1
• Harvard Data Science Review, 2025
  • Commentary on Sabina Leonelli's Environmental Intelligence: Redefining the Philosophical Premises of AI

MIHP: Material Intelligence as a Historical Problem

Journal of History of Ideas

Publication

Table of Contents

Special Issue: Journal of the History of Ideas: Brain Sciences and Intellectual History, 1945–1975, eds Danielle Carr and Andreas Killen

• Danielle Carr, Introduction to the Special Issue
• Yvan Prkachin, “Engineering Sense: Donald Hebb, Nathanial Rochester, and the Origins of Deep Learning"
• Danielle Carr, "As Metaphor or as Tool: The Computerization of the Brain Sciences and the Debate Between Cybernetics and Neurophysiology"

• Jean-Gael Barbara, "Who Owns the Brain in France? How neurophysiologists responded to cyberneticists in the French press of the 1950s"
• Nadine Weidman, "The Neurophysiology of Violence: José Delgado and the Stimoceiver"
• Cornelius Borck, "Reinventing Behavioral Brain Research in Postwar Germany"

AI Before AI

The No-Body Problem

Ghostwriting

NNAI Postdoctoral Program (2026-2028)

• Goal: recruit 1-2 postdoctoral scholars to lead new research projects, oversee graduate students and undergraduate researchers
• Expectations: multiple publications, workshops and other events; international networking; additional grant writing; curriculum development.
• Timeline
  • Approval Spring 2025
  • Posting October 2025
  • 20 viable candidates, shortlist of 4 candidates, 2 alternates
  • Interviews January 2026
  • Offer Spring 2026

Model Student: AI, Learning, and the Classroom

• Undergraduate led research project to understand student uses of AI and create a report to the University
• Undergrads Christabelle, Claudia and Isaac
• Focus groups with students on AI use and innovation
• A student-led report on what faculty and students should be thinking about as AI becomes normalized.

AI and IP

Publication

• Undergraduate Project by Isabella Yuan, 2025
• Can AI be an Author, are AI produced works "work for hire"?
• Working paper "AI, Copyright Law, and Work-Made-For-Hire"

Other talks and events

• Co-sponsored events, guest lecturers
• Mar 2026: Robin James "Good Vibes Only"
  • Co-sponsored with Political Science.
• Oct 2025: Colin Koopman on his book Data Equals
  • Co-sponsored with Political Science
• Mar 2024: Jared Zigon "How is it between us"
  • Co-sponsored with Anthropology
• Jan 2024: Todd Myers, "Writing, AI, and AI Writing"
  • Co-sponsored with Anthropology

Curriculum

Undergrad, grad, and faculty impact

Algorithms, Data and AI in the Biosciences

• A regular elective class taught by Christopher Kelty (SocGen 131 - W24, F24, W25)
• 60-person class, with TA, hands-on excercises in section

• Examples of AI, guest speakers and research projects

Confronting the Crisis of AI

• A seminar taught by Postdoctoral Scholar Shazeda Ahmed Spring 2024
• Attended by Faculty, Postdocs, Grad students

I can't go on, I'll go on

Everyday uses of AI in the Lab and Classroom

NNAI Faculty Seminar

• From the beginning NNAI has hosted a regular faculty seminar with special guests, shared readings, and much conviviality
• An effective way to seed cross-campus collaborations in a low-stakes environment
• Vistors in informal settings: Jared Zigon (UVA) on AI an ethics; Todd Myers (McGill) on writing and AI; Fred Gregory (DEVCOM Army Research Lab) on neuroscience research in the military.

Other classes at UCLA

• NNAI Board Member Danny Snelson regularly teaches "AlgoLit"— an AI and Poetry class.
• NNAI Board Member Bolei Zhou teaches machine learning, autonomous driving technology and reinforcement learning in Engineering

Promotion and Outreach

The Magic of Marcos Arranz

• NNAI Monthly newsletter
• "Pint of Science" Wayne Wu (Computer Science)
  • Autonomous Driving (May 2025)
• AIRES Undergrad AI group "Secret Agent"
  • Social evening with games and discussion
• Other workshops and collaborations planned

The Future

Proposed and Planned

LLM Impostures (2026)

• Based in the work of Michael Cooperson's ground-breaking translation of Al-hariri's Maqamat
• Performance and/or discussion of LLM and generative text as forms of poetry, memorization, translation, or performance

Speculator-in-Residence (2027)

• A proposal for a competitive "SF writer in residence" for one quarter
• Connection to LA SCi-Fi and writing communities
• Discussions between scientists and Sci-Fi writers

AI, Electricity and the Environment Workshop (2027)

• A planned collaboration with The Center for Science Technology and Public Life at USC,(Andrew Lakoff)
• What is actually happening with the environmental costs of AI?

Eat your words! Model collapse, Model Autophagy Disorder (2027)

• Planned collaboration with Rich Baraniuk, Electrical Engineering at Rice University
• Model collapse and the "data crisis" for AI models

Unsorting things out: AI in/as Medicine

• Planned research Project around LLMs and Medical Records
• How is evidence-based medicne changing as LLMs become the interface to medical records and medical knowledge?
• Led by Kelty, beginning Fall 2026/Winter 2027

Ambitions

Where else can we expand?

• ONGOING: Are we taking advantage of the right people at UCLA, in Los Angeles, and beyond?
• Can we go bigger if we partner with other institutions, nationally or internationally?
  • USC, Caltech, UCSD?
  • Max Planck Institute in Berlin
• Collaborations with professional media-makers, artists or influencers to augment our impact.

Fundraising

Leveraging Success

Current and Past Grant Writing

• NEH AI in the Humanities competition.
  • 2024 Sarah Kareem, Pamela Hieronymi, and Chris Kelty (not selected)
• ONGOING: Mellon Foundation "Unruly Intelligences" competition (PI: Danny Snelson, Co-PIs from NNAI) (Decision Fall 2026)
• PLANNED: Eric and Wendy Schmidt HAVI Program (Proposal due March 13th) (Funding levels $300K-800K)

Revenue and Costs

$$$

Revenue

(*After UCLA's gift fee of 6%)

Salary

Workshops

= Approximately 50 different international scholars have presented work amd engaged with the Livescu project.

Course costs and Undergrad Research

= Approximately 250 Undergrad students engaging with Livescu-sponsored educational content

Additional Costs Committed 2026-2027

Opportunities and Uncommitted costs

Totals

Fundraising Target = ~ $560,000 over the period 2026-2028.

Thank you!

To the Livescu Foundation.