A New WE: Creativity and Possibility in the Age of AI — KEYNOTE
Vlad Glăveanu
Professor at the School of Psychology and Director of the DCU Centre for Possibility Studies at Dublin City University (IE). Professor at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology, University of Bergen. Founder and president of the Possibility Studies Network (PSN)
23 October 2025, 11:15, Sala Cinema UNATC (75-77 Matei Voievod Street)
A New WE: Creativity and Possibility in the Age of AI
Debates about AI and art often ask whether machines can truly create. This focus risks obscuring a more profound shift. We are entering a new paradigm of creativity – what I call a new WE – in which human imagination, artificial systems, and cultural communities are entangled in novel ways. In this paradigm, creativity is less than ever before about solitary invention and much more about negotiating fields of possibility that are reshaped by algorithms, datasets, and collective forms of imagination. AI becomes not an autonomous creator but a powerful mediator of what can be imagined, produced, and valued. Yet this new WE is not without pitfalls. It brings questions of authorship, agency, and cultural ownership into sharper relief. It risks narrowing rather than widening possibilities if left unexamined, reinforcing biases, privileging efficiency over meaning, and displacing artists rather than empowering them. This keynote argues that embracing the new WE requires both imagination and responsibility to ensure an inclusive, ethical, and sustainable future for creativity.
Vlad Glăveanu, PhD, is Full Professor of Psychology in the School of Psychology and Director of the DCU Centre for Possibility Studies at Dublin City University, and Professor II at the Centre for the Science of Learning and Technology, University of Bergen. He is the founder and president of the Possibility Studies Network (PSN). His work focuses on creativity, imagination, culture, collaboration, wonder, possibility, and societal challenges. He edited the Palgrave Handbook of Creativity and Culture (2016) and the Oxford Creativity Reader (2018), co-edited the Cambridge Handbook of Creativity Across Domains (2017) and the Oxford Handbook of Imagination and Culture (2017), authored The Possible: A Sociocultural Theory (Oxford University Press, 2020), Creativity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2021), and Wonder: The Extraordinary Power of an Ordinary Experience (Bloomsbury, 2020), and authored or co-authored more than 200 articles and book chapters in these areas. He co-edits the book series Palgrave Studies in Creativity and Culture with Palgrave and the Cambridge Series on Possibility Studies with Cambridge University Press. He is editor of Europe’s Journal of Psychology (EJOP), an open-access peer-reviewed journal published by PsychOpen (Germany) as well as Possibility Studies and Society, launched by Sage in 2022. In 2018, he received the Berlyne Award from the APA Division 10 for outstanding early career contributions to the field of aesthetics, creativity, and the arts.
The keynote is part of the the second edition of the AI in Art Practices and Research international conference, organized by UNATC in Bucharest from 23–26 October 2025. The event explores the impact of AI on artistic creation and research, as well as its broader applications in society, such as accessibility, healthcare and well-being.