Simone Natale - Projecting Life Onto Machines
When:
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Venue:
Birkbeck 43 Gordon Square
Projecting Life Onto Machines
Public discussions about AI often stress the idea that technologies such as generative AI might lead to the emergence of machines that think and even feel like humans. Drawing on histories of how people project lives onto talking things, from spiritualist seances in the Victorian era to contemporary advances in AI, this talk argues that the alleged intelligence of machines has also to do with how humans perceive and relate to machines exhibiting communicative behavior. Taking up this point of view helps reframe AI as technologies that build a convincing illusion of intelligence. The emergence of generative AI should be seen not much as the creation of intelligent machines, but rather of technologies that can be perceived by humans as such.
Contact name:
Joel Mckim
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Simone Natale
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Simone Natale is Associate Professor in Media Theory and History at the University of Turin, Italy, and an Editor of the journal Media, Culture & Society. He is the author of Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Oxford University Press, 2021), which has been translated into Chinese, Italian, and Portuguese, as well as of numerous articles in journals including New Media & Society, the Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, Information, Communication & Society, and Convergence. Before returning to work in his hometown in Italy in 2020, he has taught and researched at Columbia University, US, Concordia University in Montreal, Canada, Humboldt University and the University of Cologne in Germany, and Loughborough University in the UK. His research has been funded by international institutions including AHRC, ESRC, the Humboldt Foundation, and Columbia University’s Italian Academy, and he has been invited to consult and act as expert for international organizations including the Global Partnership for Artificial Intelligence (GPAI) and the Brookings Institution.