麻豆传媒映画

In 1999, the year that saw the debut of the wildly popular sci-fi dystopia 鈥淭he Matrix,鈥� N. Katherine Hayles published 鈥淗ow We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics,鈥� a groundbreaking critique of humanity鈥檚 changing relationship to technology.

More than 25 years later, she will bring her latest insights to 麻豆传媒映画 as the opening speaker of the College of Arts and Letters 贬弄惭罢贰颁贬 initiative. 

Since 1999, Hayles has matched the exponential advance of technology, writing books and more than 100 articles on humanity, culture, and technology that most recently extend into the fascinating evolution of humanity in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Hayles is the Distinguished Research Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the James B. Duke Professor Emerita from Duke University.

In her new book, 鈥淏acteria to AI: Human Futures with our Nonhuman Symbionts,鈥� Hayles develops a new theory of mind she calls integrated cognitive framework, or ICF, outlining how meaning-making occurs in humans, animals, and some forms of artificial intelligence. 

鈥淧art of my fascination with AI in the form of large language models is my astonishment that we now have machines that can talk to us in our own language,鈥� Hayles said. 鈥漌ithin the field of AI there is a huge debate on how we should interpret these messages. Some argue that they are probabilistic sequences that have no meaning other than what we project onto them.

鈥淢y own position, which is currently a minority view, is that these artificial intelligences have created billions and billions of correlations from the human-authored texts that they have read, and moreover they鈥檝e formed networks between these correlations, and made inferences as a result of these networks.鈥� 

Her conclusions are the starting point for a collaborative conversation with Rita Raley, UC Santa Barbara English professor and a leading thinker on AI/learning from a humanities perspective, at 4:30 p.m. Monday, March 24, in the Digital Humanities Center at the University Library. 鈥淪cience and Humanities: Entanglement in the Age fo AI,鈥漜onducted in partnership with , begins CAL鈥檚 multiyear initiative. 

鈥淚n an age that is increasingly and narrowly obsessed with the possibilities of computing and AI, CAL鈥檚 贬弄惭罢贰颁贬 re-centers our attention on deeper and more vital questions. We鈥檙e asking not only what technology is and what it can do, but how, when, and why we should use it, as well as what the long-term consequences are in doing so,鈥� said CAL Dean Todd Butler.

Designed much like an artistic season, 贬弄惭罢贰颁贬 will advance collective conversation, spur research collaborations, and support student learning. It will amplify opportunities for students and encourage innovative course offerings that integrate emerging technologies with deep considerations of environment, ethics, culture, policy, consciousness, and identity.

鈥淜ate Hayles changed my life with her mentorship, and I know I am not alone,鈥� said English professor Jessica Pressman, cofounder of the Digital Humanities Initiative, who was a student of Hayles at UCLA. 鈥淪he paved the way for thinking about digital technologies as part of literary studies, not as something to fear or to see in opposition to literature but as collaborative, generative, and poetic. .All of my teaching and scholarship, which I share with 麻豆传媒映画 students every day, is inspired and informed by Hayles.鈥� 

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