College of Science Distinguished Speaker: GPT and the Language of Logic - Does It Make Sense?
College of Science Distinguished Speaker
GPT and the Language of Logic: Does It Make Sense?
Dr. N. Katherine Hayles
Distinguished Research Professor, University of California, Los Angeles
James B. Duke Professor Emerita, Duke University
Abstract:
Like all computational media, large language models of artificial intelligence such as GPT -3, -4, and ChatGPT are logic machines, operating on billions of textual tokens to predict the next words in a verbal sequence input using probability calculations. This immediately raises the question of whether these sequences have meaning in themselves, other than the meaning that a human interlocutor projects onto them. In a well-known article, Emily Bender and colleagues argued against the notion of meaning, calling the outputs of these neural net machines no more than the mutterings of “stochastic parrots.” After explaining how the programs work, this talk will present reasons to think that the programs do have a sense of meaning, and that their productions show that they are becoming, if not sentient, at least proto-sentient in their understanding of human languages, cultures, and behaviors.
Speaker Bio:
N. Katherine Hayles is the Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the James B. Duke Professor Emerita from Duke University. Her research focuses on the relations of literature, science and technology in the 20th and 21st centuries. Her twelve print books include Postprint: Books and Becoming Computational (Columbia, 2021), Unthought: The Power of the Cognitive Nonconscious (Univ. of Chicago Press, 2017) and How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis (Univ. of Chicago Press 2015), in addition to over 100 peer-reviewed articles. Her books have won several prizes, including The Rene Wellek Award for the Best Book in Literary Theory for How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Literature, Cybernetics and Informatics, and the Suzanne Langer Award for Writing Machines. She has been recognized by many fellowships and awards, including two NEH Fellowships, a Guggenheim, a Rockefellar Residential Fellowship at Bellagio, and two University of California Presidential Research Fellowships. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is currently at work on Cognizing Others: Human Futures with Our Nonhuman Symbionts.
Intended Audience:
Beginners, undergraduates, graduates, experts. Those with interest in the topic.
A reception will immediately follow in the Gosnell Atrium.
To request an interpreter, please visit myaccess.rit.edu
Event Snapshot
When and Where
Who
Open to the Public
Interpreter Requested?
No