Imaginaries of Immortality in the Age of AI:
an Intercultural Analysis

Stephen Cave is Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence and Co-Director of the Institute for Technology and Humanity, both at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on philosophy and ethics of technology, particularly AI, robotics and life-extension. He is the author of Immortality (Crown, 2012), a New Scientist book of the year, and Should You Choose To Live Forever: A Debate (with John Martin Fischer, Routledge, 2023); and co-editor of AI Narratives (OUP, 2020), Feminist AI (OUP, 2023) and Imagining AI (OUP, 2023). He writes widely about philosophy, technology and society, including for the Guardian and Atlantic. He also advises governments around the world, and has served as a British diplomat.

Tomasz Hollanek is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI) and an Affiliated Lecturer in the Department of Computer Science and Technology at the University of Cambridge, working at the intersection of AI ethics and critical design.

His ongoing research explores the possibility of applying critical design methods – prioritising the goals of social justice and environmental sustainability – in the governance, development, and deployment of AI systems. This includes work on the ethics of human-AI interaction design (in particular, the design of companion chatbots and griefbots) and the In-depth EU AI Act Toolkit, helping developers translate the requirements of the European Union’s AI Act into design practice. At LCFI, he also leads the research stream dedicated to AI, Journalism, and Communications.

Previously, Tomasz was a Vice-Chancellor’s PhD Scholar at Cambridge and a Visiting Research Fellow at the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. He has contributed to numerous research projects, including the Global AI Narratives Project at LCFI and the Ethics of Digitalization research program at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

Saide Mobayed Vega will contribute to the ‘Imaginaries of Immortality in the Age of AI: An Intercultural Analysis’ project at the CFI. She is a sociologist focusing on STS, digital sociology, critical data studies, human rights, and gender-based violence. Saide is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cambridge, where she investigates how feminicide—the gender-related killing of women and girls—becomes translated into numerical data from global data sets to local data stories.

Saide has extensive experience in academic, interdisciplinary, and cross-cultural work. She has co-organised numerous international conferences and workshops, including the Big Data & Society 2023 Colloquium: ‘Data Practices and Digital Social Worlds’ and the ‘Crossing Data: Building Bridges with Activist and Academic Practices from and for Latin America’ for CHI in 2022. Saide co-edited The Routledge International Handbook on Femicide and Feminicide, a collection of 50 chapters that offers an in-depth global examination of femicide and feminicide from various perspectives and disciplines.

Saide has been actively involved in public engagement. In 2017, she co-founded the ongoing ‘Femi(ni)cide Watch Platform’, with the UN Studies Association. From 2021-2022, she served as president of the Cambridge University Mexican Society. Before Cambridge, Saide collaborated with international and non-governmental organisations on human rights and gender-based violence projects, including UNODC and ARTICLE19.

Debayan Gupta is currently an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Ashoka University, where he teaches a course on security and privacy as well as an introductory programming class. He is also a visiting professor and research affiliate at MIT and MIT-Sloan.

Before coming to Ashoka, Debayan held an Extraordinary Faculty position in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, where he taught courses like 6.042, 6.006, and 6.046. He has a PhD from Yale and a bachelor’s degree from St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata.

Debayan’s primary areas of interest include secure computation, cryptography, and privacy. He also occasionally dabbles in number theory, complexity theory, robotics, and machine learning (and, on rare occasions, economics). He has helped start a number of companies in India and abroad, and as such, holds board positions in a number of start-ups. He also consults for and advises companies on cybersecurity, helping c-suite individuals understand and mitigate cyber-risk.

Daniel Weltman is an associate professor in the Philosophy department at Ashoka University. He works on social and political philosophy, ethics, and gender.

Ayush Sharma is an undergraduate student in Computer Science and Philosophy at Ashoka University, Class of 2026. His research and academic interests are computational logic, high-order logic, philosophy of language, metaphysics and theology. Feel free to contact me: ayush.sharma_ug25@ashoka.edu.in)

Aalok Thakkar is an assistant professor in the department of Computer Science at Ashoka University. He specializes in the areas of programming languages, formal methods, and artificial intelligence. His recent research focuses on generating correct programs from user-provided specification of program behavior, as well as understanding the limitations of computing and AI.

Maya Indira Ganesh is Associate Director (Research Partnerships), co-director of the Narratives and Justice Program, and a Senior Research Fellow at CFI. From October 2021- July 2024 she was an assistant teaching professor at the Institute of Continuing Education (ICE) where she co-directed the MSt in AI Ethics and Society run jointly between ICE and LCFI.

Maya has a Drphil in Cultural Studies from Leuphana University, Lüneburg, Germany. Her doctoral work took the case of the ‘ethics of autonomous driving’ to study the implications of ethical decision-making and governance by algorithmic/AI technologies for human social relations, and argued for a conception of AI technologies as situated in distinct infrastructural and social environments. Her monograph, Auto-Correct: The Fantasies and Failures of AI, Ethics, and the Driverless Car is available for pre-order here and the introductory chapter is free to read here. Maya’s research at CFI builds on this by focusing on AI in public and with different kinds of publics in the design and development of technology.  She draws on varied theoretical and methodological genres, including feminist scholarship, media studies, and Science and Technology Studies. She is also an invited speaker, curatorial advisor, and writer with arts and cultural organisations in Europe, and on the internet. Prior to academia, Maya spent over a decade as a researcher and activist working at the intersection of gender justice, security, and digital freedom of expression.   An up-to-date list of publications, talks, and cultural practice can be found here.

Kranti Saran is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ashoka University. He earned his doctorate at Harvard University’s Department of Philosophy in 2011, and has since been a Fellow in Philosophy at Harvard and a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Philosophy, Jawaharlal Nehru University. Most recently, he has been an Assistant Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Delhi. You can find more information about him at http://krantisaran.net/.

His research interests span the areas of perception, attention, bodily awareness, introspection, mimicry, and how these topics are related to our moral relation to others. A common thread that runs through his research is a concern with understanding facets of our cognition: its faculties and modes (perception, attention), its embodiment (bodily awareness), its consequences for our relation to our selves and our immediate social milieu (introspection, mimicry), and finally, the manner in which these topics interact with culture and so either constrain or enable dimensions of our moral relation to others.

Xiaojiao Li is the Chief Operations Officer for Berggruen China Center, where she oversees the Center’s communications strategies, media engagement plans, and she develops and manages the Center’s engagement with key partners. She manages the team’s day-to-day operations. Xiaojiao joined the China Center as the Chief Operations Officer in 2018. Prior to joining the Center, Xiaojiao worked as the Senior Public Affairs Officer (Media Relations) at the Australian Embassy in Beijing, the Program Officer at the Confucius Institute at the University of Adelaide, and the Events Coordinator at the Carnegie-Tsinghua Center for Global Policy. Xiaojiao holds a master’s degree in cross-cultural communications from Shandong University and a Bachelor degree in media from Zhejiang University.

Jian earned his PhD in Philosophy from Tsinghua University,
specializing in Contemporary Analytic Philosophy. Prior to that, he
worked as an editor at the Post Wave Publishing. He has published a number of articles and reviews in Chinese and English, and he has translated and published works of Daniel Dennett, Charles Travis, Thomas Metzinger and others from English into Chinese.

Jian is responsible for project research and management. He also manages Cui Ling Magazine as well as other publications at the Berggruen China Center.

Hannah is a Research Grants Co-ordinator at the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) and is responsible for the administration of Centre’s grants across their full life cycle. This includes financial management, reporting, and supporting colleagues in applying for funding across a range of sponsors. She also works closely with the Centre Administrator, Director, and researchers to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the Centre.

She has worked in a similar role at the Centre for Family Research at the University since 2017. She became a Chartered Accountant in 2000 and worked at PricewaterhouseCoopers from 1996 to 2005, taking a career break to raise her family before starting work at the University of Cambridge.

Hang joined the Institute for Technology and Humanity (ITH) in June 2024. The Institute is home to the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) and the Centre for Human-inspired AI (CHIA).

Reporting to the Institute Manager, she is responsible for the day-to-day operation of all aspects of the accounting and financial procedures for the Institute including, but not limited to, managing accounts payable, accounts receivable, and procurement, raising and responding to financial queries from stakeholders, completing month/year-end processes, monitoring expenditure on budgets, reporting on research grants and undertaking other such duties.

Rachel oversees administration of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI) programmes and projects. Her areas of responsibility include research management, finances, human resource management, governance and planning, IT, and communications.

Before joining CFI, Rachel worked in several roles across the School of Arts and Humanities including REF Impact Administrator, Graduate Administrator, and Project Administrator for three very different interdisciplinary research projects.

Rachel originally trained as a Management Accountant and worked in local manufacturing companies developing business strategy. She has a degree in French and Italian from the University of Leicester.

Yiyun is working closely with the Centre Administrators, Director, and researchers to ensure the smooth day-to-day running of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI). She is the PA to the Centre Director Stephen Cave.

Yiyun completed an LLM in International Business Law degree at Anglia Ruskin University before settling in the UK. She has worked in the University of Cambridge since 2019 as the Administrative Assistant at the Cambridge Graphene Centre.