We are delighted to welcome Murray Shanahan, Professor of Cognitive Robotics, Department of Computing, Imperial College London, to present at our October Colloquium.
The theme of his talk will be "How to Think About Large Language Models".
Abstract: AI systems based on large language models have become a significant cultural phenomenon. But what is the right way to think and talk about these "exotic mind-like entities"? To what extent are concepts like understanding, thinking, and consciousness relevant? In this talk I will address these questions, appealing to the concept of role-play as a way to draw on our natural fund of folk psychological concepts without falling prey to anthropomorphism.
This event is in person only. Please register your interest in attending. Seats will be allocated on a first-arrival basis, with priority given to those who register.
The Institute for Ethics in AI will bring together world-leading philosophers and other experts in the humanities with the technical developers and users of AI in academia, business and government. The ethics and governance of AI is an exceptionally vibrant area of research at Oxford and the Institute is an opportunity to take a bold leap forward from this platform.
Every day brings more examples of the ethical challenges posed by AI; from face recognition to voter profiling, brain machine interfaces to weaponised drones, and the ongoing discourse about how AI will impact employment on a global scale. This is urgent and important work that we intend to promote internationally as well as embedding in our own research and teaching here at Oxford.
Professor Murray Shanahan is Professor of Cognitive Robotics at Imperial College London. Educated at Imperial College (BSc(Eng) computer science, 1984) and Cambridge University (King’s College; PhD computer science, 1988), he became a full professor at Imperial in 2006, and joined DeepMind in 2017. His publications span artificial intelligence, machine learning, logic, dynamical systems, computational neuroscience, and philosophy of mind. Professor Shanahan is active in public engagement, and was scientific advisor on the film Ex Machina. He has written several books, including “Embodiment and the Inner Life” (2010) and “The Technological Singularity” (2015).
Commentators
Dr Anita Avramides is currently Emeritus Fellow in philosophy at St Hilda’s College Oxford. She has been a Senior Research Fellow (2020-23) and the Southover Manor Trust Fellow in Philosophy (1990-2020) at St Hilda’s College and Reader in Philosophy of Mind in the Faculty of Philosophy at Oxford. She has published articles in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. Her books include Other Minds (Routledge) and Meaning and Mind: An Examination of a Gricean Account of Language (MIT), as well as a co-edited volume, Knowing Other Minds (OUP). Her current research focuses on understanding our relations to others, and brings together work from both the analytic and the phenomenological traditions in philosophy.
Professor Rahul Santhanam is Professor of Computer Science at Oxford, and a Tutorial Fellow at Magdalen College. Rahul obtained a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Chicago in 2005, working under the supervision of Prof. Lance Fortnow and Prof. Janos Simon. After postdoctoral stints at Simon Fraser University and the University of Toronto, he joined the University of Edinburgh as a Lecturer in Computer Science in 2008. Rahul was promoted to Reader in 2013, and moved to Oxford in 2016. In 2013, he was awarded the ERC Consolidator Grant ALUnif on "Algorithms and Lower Bounds: A Unified Approach", which he held from March 2014 until August 2019.
Hosted by
Professor John Tasioulas, the inaugural Director for the Institute for Ethics and AI, and Professor of Ethics and Legal Philosophy, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford. He was previously the inaugural Chair of Politics, Philosophy & Law and Director of the Yeoh Tiong Lay Centre for Politics, Philosophy & Law at The Dickson Poon School of Law, Kings College London. Professor Tasioulas has degrees in Law and Philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a D.Phil in Philosophy from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He was previously a Lecturer in Jurisprudence at the University of Glasgow, Reader in Moral and Legal Philosophy at the University of Oxford, where he taught from 1998-2010, and Quain Professor of Jurisprudence at University College London. He has also acted as a consultant on human rights for the World Bank and is a member of the International Advisory Board of the European Parliament's Panel for the Future of Science and Technology (STOA). He has published widely in moral, legal, and political philosophy.