Regular registration for Winter quarter begins

Artificial intelligence arrives with an older companion, the history of signs, authority, interpretation, and delegated intelligence. Today’s systems write with unprecedented fluency, yet intelligence itself is hardly a settled premise. Who has the authority to recognize it, interpret its signs, and decide when a generated form becomes knowledge, literature, or output without responsibility?

This one-day symposium brings together scholars, writers, artists, and researchers from Africa, Europe, and North America to examine how generative AI changes literary creation and the conditions under which knowledge acquires authority. Sessions in English and French will connect humanistic inquiry with artistic practice and research on the political and material infrastructures of AI.

The symposium concludes with the Klopsteg Lecture by Lauren M. E. Goodlad, Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Rutgers University and editor of Critical AI.

Faculty, students, staff, and members of the public interested in AI and the humanities are welcome. The full program and venue details will be posted here as they become available. A reception will follow.

Co-presented by

Northwestern’s Department of French and Italian and the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities through its HumAIn: Being Human in the Age of AI initiative.

With support from

The Weinberg College Dean’s Office; the Northwestern Network for Collaborative Intelligence (NNCI); Villa Albertine Chicago / the Embassy of France; and the Office of the Provost through the Klopsteg Fund.

Join us for an in-person Distinguished Speaker event featuring Frankie Liu, Senior Product Manager in Omniverse Content and Simulation at NVIDIA. Drawing on more than two decades in visual effects, Liu will explore the parallels between the digital transformation of filmmaking and today’s rise of physical AI, examining how NVIDIA Omniverse, digital twins, and simulation are helping researchers and engineers build virtual worlds where intelligent machines can learn, test, and interact.

Please note: this is an IN-PERSON event only! There will not be a recording. Open to Northwestern community members.

Title: The Worlds We Build: AI, NVIDIA Omniverse, and the Rise of Physical AI

Abstract: The rise of digital filmmaking transformed how artists built worlds and told stories. Drawing on my twenty years in visual effects, I’ll reflect on that transition and explore another transformation now unfolding through AI, with implications reaching far beyond the screen.

Through NVIDIA Omniverse and examples from industry and robotics, I’ll explore how the digital worlds we build can help us understand physical systems, test new ideas, and give intelligent machines places to learn. I’ll discuss digital twins and what they make possible:
- Exploring a factory before it is built
- Testing how robots interact with their surroundings
- Studying situations that would be difficult or costly to reproduce in the real world

Along the way, I’ll explain why the foundations of these environments, including shared 3D data, materials, physics, and sensor simulation, matter to the questions we want to answer.

I’ll then connect these capabilities to the rise of physical AI: systems that perceive, reason, and act in physical environments. We’ll explore how real-world observations inform simulation, how AI helps create new experiences for training and testing, and how evaluation guides the next round of development. This “data flywheel” connects the worlds we build with the machines learning to operate within them.

Drawing connections between filmmaking and simulation, I’ll offer a personal perspective on this transition and the opportunities it creates for engineering, research, and creative problem-solving.

Frankie Liu is a Senior Product Manager in Omniverse Content and Simulation at NVIDIA. He joined NVIDIA in 2019 as a Product Manager overseeing physically based materials and rendering for Omniverse. He later transitioned to Omniverse Customer Success before moving into Content and Simulation.

He received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Northwestern University in 1997 and brings over twenty years of experience in visual effects. His career includes serving as Head of Lighting at Weta Digital in New Zealand and North America, Senior Research and Development and Rendering Engineer at DreamWorks Animation, and Senior Computer Graphics Supervisor at Sony Pictures Imageworks and Digital Domain. His film and television work includes Titanic, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, How to Train Your Dragon 2, Avatar: The Way of Water, Avengers: Endgame, and Game of Thrones.

He is a member of the Visual Effects Society and the Academy Software Foundation, and serves as a voting member of the MaterialX Technical Steering Committee.

Register Now

Dissertation, PhD Final Exam, and change of grade forms due to TGS for Fall PhD candidates

Thanksgiving Vacation begins at 6:00 PM (No classes, University offices closed)

Fall Classes Resume

Fall classes end

Fall Exams begin

Fall exams end