Language: English
Location: in presence (Auditorium SAP/TUM Lab (AE.76))
Offered in: winter semester 2024–25, Wednesdays 10–12 a.m.
Description
Generative AI generates output that can be experienced and understood by humans as a meaningful response to a prompt. It uses stochastic patterns derived from data, unveiling a dimension of human language use and other behavior that is usually not apparent to humans. For humans, data exists in a horizon of understanding, empathy, expectation, imagination, and other experiential features of communication. In how far can these be replaced by computations on stochastic patterns? What kinds of meaning can such computations produce? What is the potential of AI to influence human thought, emotion, and behavior, and what does that mean for society? AI raises questions on topics philosophers have studied from multiple perspectives for millennia.
As a basis for our discussions, we study the concepts of the digital, data, text, information, model, digitization, and computation and their relation to seemingly radically different concepts of interpretation, understanding, emotions, and other lived experiences. We discuss conceptual, scientific, economic, and societal developments underpinning the development of digital technology, the design and implementation of generative AI, the impact of generative AI on work and society, and the ethical challenges of the use of AI.
Upon successful completion of this seminar, students will be able to:
- analyze classical and contemporary philosophical texts
- describe arguments from today’s philosophical discussions on (generative) AI
- describe insights from classical philosophical discussions of pertinent topics
- delineate features of meaning and its relation stochastic patterns and
- understand ways in which (generative) AI can influence human thought, emotion, and behavior
- describe implications of the use of AI for society
- present complex philosophical thought
About the lecturer
Chris Durt has studied the relationship between digital technology and the human mind in philosophy, psychology, computer linguistics, and intercultural communication. He wrote his PhD (2012) on the mathematization of sensual experience and has since engaged in several distinguished research projects on digital technology and the human mind. Chris is a passionate teacher and is engaged in a long-standing discourse with stakeholders in the IT industry. More info, his philosophical writings, and the course page: www.durt.de.