Wednesday, 23rd October 2024 @ 12:30pm (BST)
Abstract: AI assistants have entered various spheres of activity including education, work life and personal life. The extensive linguistic capacities of these systems lead many to treat them as helpful partners enabling them to find out more, perform intellectual tasks and at time to explore their emotions. But should we treat them as human-like agents or human usable tools? The answer depends on whether we should include them in the linguistic community as fully fledged linguistic agents. Whether we should or not depends on the correct characterization of what they do, on whether they use and understand a language. I will consider what it would take for them to do so.
About the presenter: Barry Smith is a Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Institute of Philosophy at the University of London’s School of Advanced Study. He is founding director of its Centre for the Study of the Senses, which pioneers collaborative research between philosophers, psychologists and neuroscientists. He has held visiting professorships at the University of California at Berkeley and the Ecole Normale Superiéure in Paris. He did his PhD at the University of Edinburgh in the early days of AI, is a philosopher of language and mind, and co-edited The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Language, OUP 2008 (with Ernest Lepore), and Knowing Our Own Minds, OUP 1998 (with Crispin Wright and Cynthia Macdonald). His recent research is on the multisensory nature of perceptual experience, focusing on taste, smell and flavour. He has published theoretical and experimental papers on the senses, writing in Nature, Food Quality and Preference, Chemical Senses and Flavour.