Firdaus Khalid
When convenience overtakes authenticity in the age of AI, it's important to reclaim our identity.
Firdaus Khalid is an educator at Manchester Metropolitan University, VR artist, and a game designer exploring how AI, virtual reality, gamification, and interactive media shape contemporary identity and selfhood. His creative work spans experimental games and immersive virtual reality projects. As an educator, Firdaus guides students in pushing creative and technical boundaries whilst examining how emerging technologies influence human experience and agency.
Through his practice, Firdaus ignites meaningful conversation about who we are becoming in an algorithm-driven world. From this, he aims to answer the question of whether we have the power to choose our own path in this world. By bridging art, technology, and philosophy, Firdaus demonstrates that creative practice is essential to understanding our relationship with AI, VR, and the future of human identity.
About the talk
Firdaus’s talk will examine how AI blurs the boundaries between human and machine identity. As we feed algorithms our voices, images, and habits, we create digital clones that mimic and sometimes replace us. Through storytelling and reflection, Firdaus will explore what is lost when convenience overtakes authenticity. He will challenge audiences to consider the consequences of algorithmic self-replication and the decline of human agency. True identity, he reminds us, isn’t automated. It is built from presence, imperfection, and the choice to remain meaningfully human. Attendees will leave questioning their relationship with technology and empowered to reclaim authenticity in an AI-driven world.
Interesting Facts
Interesting thing about you that people won’t know
I was an official Space Cadet for a national astronaut programme many years ago.
What achievement makes you most proud?
Exhibiting my VR arts in many international art showcases around the world.
What do you get up to in your spare time?
Spending quality time with my family.
If you weren’t doing what you’re doing now, what would you be doing instead?
I might have been an Escape Room Designer, or perhaps a Board Game Maker.