Auckland Writers Festival

There are approximately three million robots working in factories around the world, and another 30 million in people’s homes. Soon robots will outnumber humans. But what happens if an autonomous AI harms or kills a person, deliberately or accidentally? It will happen. In fact, it already has. In Machines Behaving Badly, Professor Toby Walsh – Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW Sydney, and a leading advisor to the UN on lethal autonomous weapons (aka killer robots) discusses a future where machines start to shape society in ways we are not aware of. Described as a ‘rock star of Australia’s digital revolution’ he explores such questions as whether robots can have rights and if Alexa is racist with Toby Manhire. Supported by Platinum Patrons Dame Rosie & Michael Horton. SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 11:30am – 12:30pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

Pip Williams’ best-selling novel The Dictionary of Lost Words tells the story of motherless Esme who spends her childhood in the Scriptorium, a garden shed in Oxford where her father and a team of lexicographers gather words for the first Oxford English Dictionary. Over time she discovers words relating to women’s experiences often go unrecorded. The novel won numerous awards including the 2021 ABIA General Fiction Book of the Year. In Williams’ latest novel, The Bookbinder of Jericho, her talent for historical research and beautiful storytelling shines through in the story of twin sisters who work in the bindery at Oxford University Press in Jericho. She discusses who gets to make knowledge, who gets to access it, and what is lost when it is withheld with Sonya Wilson. SUN, 21 MAY 2023, 1:00pm – 2:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.

The judges for the winning 2022 Booker Prize praised Shehan Karunatilaka’s novel The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida for the ‘ambition of its scope, and the hilarious audacity of its narrative techniques’. Set in Sri Lanka during the 25- year civil war, a murdered photographer has seven days to solve the mystery of his own death. It’s a philosophical tale but at the heart of the novel is the horror of a devastating conflict. ‘Sri Lankans specialise in gallows humour. It’s our coping mechanism’, said Karunatilaka. With renewed political and economic crisis in his country, Karunatilaka discusses with Brannavan Gnanalingam how the corruption and race-baiting of the past is still having its ghostly effects on current tumultuous times. Supported by Asia New Zealand Foundation / Te Whītau Tūhono. SAT, 20 MAY 2023, 4:00pm – 5:00pm, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Aotea Centre.