Peter Danenberg
prof. Thomas Nowotny
Peter Danenberg and Jacqueline O'Reilly
Audience
On 17th June 2025 we held the inaugural Margaret Boden Annual Lecture in Interdisciplinary AI. The event was co-organised by Sussex AI, Digital Futures at Work Research Centre (Digit), and University of Sussex Business School.
Professor Ingrid Woolard, Executive Dean of the Business School, introduced the event before Professor Thomas Nowotny presented the rich history of AI at the University of Sussex, which includes the work of Professor Maggie Boden.
We were delighted to welcome Peter Danenberg, Senior Software Engineer at Google DeepMind, who delivered a thought-provoking talk on ‘Thinking Creatively and Critically in the Age of LLMs'. Professor Jacqueline O’Reilly, Director of Digit, offered a response and chaired a lively Q&A session.
Thinking Creatively and Critically in the Age of LLMs - The Margaret Boden Annual Lecture
During his talk, Peter explained that we stand at a new intellectual threshold—one shaped not by the solitude of the desert or the agora, but by the strange companionship of large language models. LLMs offer a new kind of dialectical partner—endlessly available, fast, and fluent—but risk nudging us toward regression: predictable outputs, safe ideas, and derivative forms, with little understanding of the underlying process. In this era of prompt-based productivity and “vibe coding” how do we preserve the imaginative fire and use these models to not just echo the corpus, but to provoke creative transformation? And how do we ensure that humans avoid becoming passive verifiers rather than active problem-solvers?
Drawing on Aristotle’s distinction between poietic (productive) and peirastic (testing) faculties, Peter argued that LLMs and our usage of them must evolve. To preserve human judgment, AI must not just assist, but challenge—provoking the kind of thinking that can’t be outsourced. What emerges is a vision of AI not as a replacement, but as a crucible for transformation.
About Margaret Boden
Margaret Boden OBE FBA is a pioneer in artificial intelligence, whose career spans from the 1960s to her most recent publication in 2016. As a Research Professor at Sussex, she was instrumental in establishing the world’s first cognitive science programme, pioneering interdisciplinary research across AI, psychology, philosophy, and computer science. Her work has had an important influence on both Sussex’s academic legacy and the evolution of AI worldwide. She shaped the University’s research direction in informatics and cognitive science, and influenced the wider field through her interdisciplinary leadership. Margaret Boden’s work remains highly relevant today. Her research into creativity and the mind has deepened our understanding of both the potential and limitations of AI. The Margaret Boden Annual Lecture celebrates her lasting impact and inspires new generations to pursue creative, interdisciplinary research in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
Agenda
The event, from 10am-12 noon, featured:
- Introduction from Ingrid Woolard, Executive Dean, University of Sussex Business School
- Introduction from Thomas Nowotny, Sussex AI: "AI research and interdisciplinary at Sussex"
- Peter Danenberg: “Thinking Creatively and Critically in the Age of LLMs”
- Peter Danenberg and Jacqueline O'Reilly: Moderated discussion with audience questions
- Jacqueline O'Reilly: Concluding remarks on the future of work and AI