- Role
- Convenor
- Affiliation
- ANU School of Cybernetics
- ben.swift@anu.edu.au
- Web
- https://benswift.me
Ben designed this course, and convenes it too. He’s a Senior Lecturer at the ANU School of Cybernetics, where he leads the Cybernetic Studio: a community that makes things out of hardware/software/people/stuff to explore cybernetic systems and their impact on the world. His recent research takes a creative, experimental (and sometimes weird) approach to AI and large language models, spanning AI literacy pedagogy, human-scale AI artefacts, and the agentic coding workflows this course is built around. He created LLMs Unplugged, a hands-on workshop where learners build language models with pen, paper and dice.
Ben has been designing and teaching courses at the ANU for over a decade, across the School of Computing and the School of Cybernetics, from 400-student core programming courses to the ANU Laptop Ensemble. He works in the open: nearly all of his research code and teaching materials (including this website) live on GitHub. Before the current AI moment he spent 15 years building programming languages and tools for live-coding musical performance, and he still performs live-coded music whenever he gets the chance.