BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//UM//UM*Events//EN
CALSCALE:GREGORIAN
BEGIN:VTIMEZONE
TZID:America/Detroit
TZURL:http://tzurl.org/zoneinfo/America/Detroit
X-LIC-LOCATION:America/Detroit
BEGIN:DAYLIGHT
TZOFFSETFROM:-0500
TZOFFSETTO:-0400
TZNAME:EDT
DTSTART:20070311T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=3;BYDAY=2SU
END:DAYLIGHT
BEGIN:STANDARD
TZOFFSETFROM:-0400
TZOFFSETTO:-0500
TZNAME:EST
DTSTART:20071104T020000
RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=11;BYDAY=1SU
END:STANDARD
END:VTIMEZONE
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTAMP:20260918T152515
DTSTART;TZID=America/Detroit:20261118T140000
DTEND;TZID=America/Detroit:20261118T150000
SUMMARY:Livestream / Virtual:Adderley Positive Research Incubator: Preeti Varma
DESCRIPTION:Adderley Positive Research Incubator\nHosted by: Center for Positive Organizations\n\nHow Workers Become Captivated by an Imagined Future\nFeatured Scholar: Preeti Varma\, INSEAD\n\nDescription: In an ethnographic study of employees at Multivex (MV)\, an AI development company building frontier multimodal AI models\, I present a theoretical model describing the social construction of aspirational intoxication\, defined as a state of captivation with an imagined future. I find that workers confront a tension arising from the simultaneous promise and threat of advanced AI to society’s future—a tension amplified by accelerating technological capabilities and nested competitive races. This tension generates an intractable anxiety (moral\, existential\, and competitive) about the future. Rather than avoiding or accepting this anxiety\, workers engage in three cognitive processes—intellectualizing narratives\, abstracting identity\, and gamifying reality—that transform anxiety into fascination\, significance\, and thrill. This study helps explain how workers become increasingly invested in realizing transformative technological futures\, and how such investment reinforces the competitive dynamics that accelerate their development and sustain technological progress.
UID:152456-21913763@events.umich.edu
URL:https://events.umich.edu/event/152456
CLASS:PUBLIC
STATUS:CONFIRMED
CATEGORIES:Center For Positive Organizations,Research
LOCATION:Off Campus Location
CONTACT:
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR