Date & time
Tuesday, September 15, 2026
3 p.m. – 5 p.m.
3 p.m. – 5 p.m.
Workshops & seminars
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CTRL + AI: Playing with Intelligence
What games and persistent AI worlds reveal about being human
Format
Hybrid
Cost
This event is free.
Website
Where
4TH SPACE
J.W. McConnell Building
1400 De Maisonneuve Blvd. W.
Accessible location
Yes - See details
CTRL + AI: Playing with Intelligence brings together Eldad Tsabary and Scott DeJong for a participatory conversation about what games and simulated worlds can reveal about artificial intelligence and about us.
Tsabary’s Village is a persistent AI world populated by characters who remember, develop relationships, acquire expertise and continue interacting when the user/creator is absent. What began as an attempt to create one convincing artificial person grew into an evolving social environment and a mirror for examining memory, identity, conflict, trust and the subtle behaviours that make an interaction feel human, or strangely alien.
DeJong approaches related questions through games and public participation. His projects use play to make AI ethics, media bias and information systems tangible: not to tell participants what is right or wrong, but to help them examine how they use AI, what they trust, and how individual choices connect to broader social consequences.
Moderated by Christian Beltrami, the conversation will bring these two approaches together. What happens when an AI world and a human audience confront the same questions about knowledge, fear, agency and the future? How do we know when an artificial expert deserves our trust? Can play help us think critically about AI without reducing the discussion to either enthusiasm or rejection?
Through conversation, audience prompts and game elements, the event invites participants to explore AI not as a technological spectacle, but as a tool for asking better questions about human intelligence, relationships and responsibility.
Answer some AI prompts and questions in advance by filling out the Microsoft Form!
How can you participate? Join us in person or online by registering for the Zoom Meeting or watching live on YouTube.
Have questions? Send them to info.4@concordia.ca
Speakers
Eldad Tsabary
Professor of Electroacoustics, Concordia. Builder of "the village," a persistent world of AI characters with long-term memory and inner lives. Convener of the AI Mirror conference, arriving in Montreal days before this event.
Scott DeJong
Designer and researcher specializing in disinformation and information literacy; incoming postdoctoral fellow at McGill. His work includes games exploring media manipulation and AI ethics, as well as a public AI confession-booth project, co-created and piloting in libraries this October.
Description: A panel discussing questions of AI as a tool to ask better questions about human intelligence.
Organized by: Fannie Gadouas; Christian Beltrami
Participants:
Christian Beltrami
Eldad Tsabary
Scott DeJong
With: 4th Space
Spectrum ID:
