Organized by Dr. Christoph Durt and Dr. Lucy Osler
for the Hodges Foundation for Philosophical Orientation
This seminar meets on a monthly basis, the second Tuesday of each month, beginning on April 11, 2023. There will be at least 8 seminar sessions. Meeting time: 10:00 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. (US Central Time). The beginning corresponds in summer to: 8 a.m. San Francisco, 10 a.m. Nashville, 11 a.m. New York, 12 p.m. Rio de Janeiro, 4 p.m. Lagos, Lisbon, London, 5 p.m. Berlin, Madrid, Rome, 8:30 p.m. Kolkata, 11 p.m. Beijing, Manila (but please double check your local time).
CONTENT
Artificial Intelligence (AI) increasingly generates output that changes not only how we find our way on the internet and in the world. AI also changes how we relate to each other and how we conceive of ourselves. In all these respects, AI is increasingly intertwined with human orientation. To study how AI changes orientation, the seminar builds on the philosophy of orientation, and in return develops it further. We discuss questions such as: What does AI-produced text reveal about the patterns of human thought, language, and interaction? How does it change them? How do we communicate with and treat AI, and how does this impact our emotions towards and understanding of each other?
The seminar focusses on the novel text production capabilities of Large Language Models such as Chat GPT. We trace back their fundamental impact to a revolutionary technology possibly even more transformative than the internet and the printing press: writing. The now often overlooked changes writing brought to memory, thinking, communicating, and philosophical understanding have already been problematized by Plato in his – writing. Besides Plato, we discuss topical contributions by renown contemporary philosophers, most of whom will participate in the discussion of their texts.
Click here for the tentative overview of topics and texts.
Guest speakers, whose texts we will read and who will visit our seminars (among others):
The seminar is discussion-based, so participants are expected to read the texts before the meetings. The seminar is free. Please apply by April 04, 2023, via email to seminars@hfpo.com. To apply, please send a short text briefly describing 1. your professional and/or academic background, 2. your philosophical interests, and 3. your motivation for joining the seminar.
