Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "Unfolding a Fuzzy Future? Dimensions for Thinking about 'Singularity'"

Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht (Stanford University) presents "Unfolding a Fuzzy Future? Dimensions for Thinking about 'Singularity'." This talk was given on September 11, 2023, and was part of "Mind-Dependent Artifacts: Artifact-Dependent Minds," a weeklong seminar from the Institute for Philosophy and the New Humanities.
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Artifacts are a primary object of study in the humanities. They are products and, thus, manifestations of human thought, action, and self-determination without which they cannot be understood. At the same time, human mindedness depends on artifacts, and as well as other objects - a dependence that is manifest in the form of artifacts. Human mindedness and the reality of artifacts are therefore intertwined in complex ways. Our Fall institute meeting 2023 Institute will consider ways in which human mindedness and the reality of artifacts are dialectically intertwined. Of special interest will be automatically or mechanically produced artifacts, and AI systems as artifacts that are neither inert causal models of human thinking nor independently minded entities. The ontology of such products thus needs to be calibrated in light of their contribution to the deep diversity of the mutual dependence of mindedness and artifacts. Some questions our seminar will address include: How do AI-research and AI-systems structure and restructure the historical, diverse articulation of human mindedness? How does our understanding of these and other artifacts shape our self-conception at the most fundamental level? We will explore these issues in the ontology, epistemology, and humanistic study of AI and other artifacts together with distinguished keynote speakers which include Cameron Buckner, David Chalmers (who will give the Forum Humanum Lecture), Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, Nandi Theunissen, and Kalindi Vora. IPNH co-directors Markus Gabriel, Paul Kottman and Zed Adams will also present lectures.
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