Stanford Humanities Center
Do chatbots understand human language? This is one of the most debated issues about contemporary artificial intelligence, oscillating between the opposing answers "able to understand" (meaning-sensitive) and "unable to understand" (meaning-blind).
In this talk, I argue in favor of meaning blindness by highlighting several issues that are not considered enough in the debate. My arguments are based on a media-philosophical and cultural-technical approach. Artificial intelligence is becoming a ‘cultural technique’ in transitioning from print culture to digital literacy. However, it is an alien and non-human kind of performing intelligence and processing language. Not similarity and homology but difference and diversity are the foundations for successful interaction between humans and AI. This is explained by analogy with the "cultural technique of flattening": Projecting visual and textual information into the two-dimensionality of inscribed and illustrated surfaces is not deformation and impoverishment, but a creative force. What is the key to the scientific and artistic productivity of artificial flatness (images, writings, diagrams, maps, screens)? And what is the connection between the cultural technique of flattening and Chatbots’ token-statistical operations?
–Sybille Krämer
About the Speaker
Sybille Krämer was Professor of Philosophy at the Free University of Berlin until her retirement in April 2018 and has been Senior Professor ("Guest Researcher") at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg since March 2019. The University of Linköping, Sweden, awarded her an honorary doctorate (Dr. h.c.) in 2016.
When
Also online via Zoom
Share
Related Events
Ge Wang | What do We (Really) Want From AI?
