The Role of Critical Culture in the Age of AI: The Thinking Festival – «Our World: A Crisis of Meaning»

This article explores the interplay between technology, knowledge, and meaning in the age of artificial intelligence and cultural automation. Drawing from the inaugural Thinking Festival—an interdisciplinary event hosted in November 2024 at the University Politehnica of Bucharest—the study examines how lectures, workshops, and debates fostered reflection on ethical and epistemological challenges posed by technological transformation. Under the central theme “Our World: A Crisis of Meaning,” the festival convened students, academics, entrepreneurs, and international thinkers, offering a space for dialogue across fields. Featured guests included writer Paul Kingsnorth, robotics expert Rustam Stolkin, researcher Felicia Milian, and storyteller Daniel Druhora, whose contributions bridged disciplines such as extreme robotics, bioethics, literature, and digital culture. These encounters created a rich environment for questioning how meaning is shaped or fragmented in technologically mediated societies. The article argues that idea-driven festivals like this one can serve as laboratories of critical thinking, offering young people tools to navigate a reality increasingly shaped by automation and symbolic disorientation. It also underscores the importance of transdisciplinary dialogue and reflexive education in fostering a renewed culture of meaning in the post-digital age.