Talk by Prof. Orit Halpern on jan. 21st @ University of Cambridge- Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy about Planetary Design: The Imagined Worlds of Generative AI”

Workshop Myth and AI at University of Cambridge/ Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy.

Machine learning systems’ growing autonomy will likely make them even more inscrutable and unpredictable in the future. Digital systems have come to produce meaning, occupy our life-worlds, and shape reality.

Myths regarding AI have traditionally been cast in a negative light and as being antithetical to rational thinking (logos). Artificial intelligence, and algorithmic and digital systems more broadly, are often treated as ‘enacting’ rationality, but are they? Or do they shed light on the some of the ambiguities and limits of traditional rationality?

This workshop intends to focus less on AI narratives and the various myths and mythologies about AI than how AI can function as a form of myth. It also hopes to examine a whole host of attendant questions including (but not limited to): What is AI’s relationship to myth? What kind of thinking has AI given rise to? Can rationality veer towards the mythical? Are there alternative ways of thinking about and designing AI? Can we, and more broadly AI, envision new forms of rationality? What role can grand narratives play in the current climate? Can they help overcome traditional dichotomies between natural and technical? Can myths help us forge new ‘horizons of expectations’ (Koselleck) or help cultivate indeterminacy and ambiguity in the world? Can they help us create order and meaning, as well as enact change? Can new myths help elicit new visions beyond risk management, the pursuit of efficiency, and technological solutionism and more broadly, modernity and liberalism beyond mere calculability and risk management? How have AI systems affected our historical understanding of ourselves? Can AI’s myths help cast a different light on reality? What kind of myths are our current digital systems peddling? What are the limits of myths and mythical thinking? Is there a need for new digital myths for the 21st century?

Programme:

9.30-9.45 – Introduction

9.45-10.30 – Thierry Poibeau (ENS) – Myth and AI: Emergence as an Example of a Typical Myth in AI

10.30-11.15 – Vincent Blok (Wageningen University) – TBC

11.30-12.15 – Francesco Bianchini (University of Bologna) – Generative AI: from knowledge to myth

12.15-13.00 – Orit Halpern (TU Dresden) – Planetary Design: The Imagined Worlds of Generative AI”

LUNCH

14.00-14.45 – Diego Donna (University of Bologna) – Pierre Lévy and the myth of the artificial-collective intelligence

14.45-15.30 – Mark Coeckelbergh (University of Vienna) – Caught in Creation Myths: AI and the Creator-Creature Relationship

15.45-16.30 – David Auerbach (Public Affairs) –From Algorithms to Evolution: A new Creation Myth for AIs

16.30-17.15 – Antoinette Rouvroy (Namur) – Defeating the myth of algorithmic realism for the sake of utopia

17.30-18.15 – Audrey Borowski (Bonn/Cambridge) – The new Metaphysics of AI

ENDJoin the workshop via Zoom.

This workshop is convened by: Cambridge Digital Humanities, Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, Centre for Global Knowledge Studies (Gloknos), and the Centre for Technomoral Futures at the University of Edinburgh.

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