Event Series
Artificial intelligence is no longer just transforming apps, office work, or search engines. It is increasingly beginning to reshape agriculture, food systems, biology, labour, and even living organisms themselves. Yet these developments are rarely discussed together.
This event series, hosted by Save Our Seeds together with people from the AI, science, environmental and civil society communities, creates space for exactly these conversations.
Through these events, we want to connect people who would not usually meet in the same room: AI researchers, technologists, environmentalists, scientists, artists, activists, farmers, policy thinkers, students, and curious citizens.
Together, we explore questions such as:
- How is AI changing agriculture and food systems
- What happens when biology becomes programmable?
- Who benefits from technological progress — and who carries the risks?
- How is the convergence of AI and genetic engineering reshaping society?
- How should society respond when AI, automation, and genetic engineering begin to converge?
- And how can citizens meaningfully participate in shaping these developments?
We believe these conversations should not happen only inside tech companies, research institutions, or political circles. They belong in public spaces and should be accessible across disciplines and backgrounds — no technical expertise required.
Our events combine talks, discussions, storytelling and open exchange. The goal is neither blind techno-optimism nor fear-driven narratives, but informed, critical, and constructive dialogue about the futures we are collectively building.
First Event: Square Tomatoes and Robot Bees — Who decides?
Most conversations about AI skip the part that is crucial: who it’s built for, who pays for it, and who doesn’t get a say.
This evening goes exactly there.
We start in 1960s California, where scientists bred a new kind of tomato: square, hard, machine-ready, and wiped out 82% of the state’s tomato farms in the process. Farmworkers and small farmers sued the university behind the technology, arguing they were being forced to fund their own replacement. They lost. But the questions they raised never went away.
Today, researchers are using AI, robotics and gene editing to create tomatoes that can be pollinated by robots, crops designed for automated production systems, and even new traits engineered for consumer preferences. AI is having an impact on agriculture, food production, and labour, often with public money, rarely with public input. Sounds familiar?
What to expect
A 90-minute interactive evening:
- Opening talk connecting the tomato harvester story to today’s AI developments
- Live audience polling
- Conversation with Ildi Carlisle-Cummins (California Institute for Rural Studies): storyteller, oral historian, and director of the Cal Ag Roots project, one of the organisations that grew out of the original lawsuit
- Open audience discussion
- Informal networking to close
What you’ll take away
A sharper way to think about who controls the technologies influencing our food, our work, and our world, and what citizens can actually do when change feels inevitable.
If the phrase “square tomato” sounds too strange to be true, you’re not alone. Even the TV detective Mr. Monk couldn’t believe his eyes!
Free to attend, free of jargon, no expertise required.
Currently based in Berlin — open to everyone curious enough to join the conversation.
Hosted by Save Our Seeds and Human-Future-Hub Berlin
Tea, coffee, water, beer, wine, and pizza will be available throughout the evening.
Registration:
Registration via Meetup
Registration via Luma
