Hostile Epistemology; The Future of AI

An interview with C. Thi Nguyen; an event with Cameron Buckner

Dear all,

I am extremely excited to announce that two people from our management team have stepped forward offering to take on the newly created role of “Managing Director”: Andrés Saenz De Sicilia and Tara Needham. They will be gradually “onboarding” over the next six weeks and will take on the role fully from 1st July. We will feature full “Meet the Editors” profiles of both Andrés and Tara in forthcoming newsletters, so you can get to know them a bit better. I could not be happier in terms of what this means for the future of The Philosopher!

Your Sunday Read
“Trust, Expertise, and Hostile Epistemology”
a conversation with C. Thi Nguyen

Much of the current misinformation crisis seems to derive from misplaced trust. In this conversation, C. Thi Nguyen discusses his idea of “hostile epistemology”, which examines how environmental factors exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. As finite beings with limited cognitive resources, we constantly reason in a rush due to overwhelming information, leaving gaps that can be exploited. Given this, how can individuals with limited understanding determine which group to trust? You can read the interview here.

Monday Event: 11am PT/2pm ET/7pm UK/8pm CET
“The History of Philosophy and the Future of AI”
Cameron Buckner in conversation with Audrey Borowski

In recent years, deep learning systems like AlphaGo, AlphaFold, DALL-E, and ChatGPT have blown through expected upper limits on artificial neural network research, which attempts to create artificial intelligence in computational systems by replicating aspects of the brain’s structure. These deep learning systems are of unprecedented scale and complexity in the size of their training set and parameters, however, making it very difficult to understand how they perform as well as they do. In this event, Cameron Buckner will outline a framework for thinking about foundational philosophical questions in deep learning, and will link deep learning’s research agenda to a strain of thought in classic empiricist philosophy of mind. You can find out more and register here.

Event Recording
If you missed the recent panel conversation on “Marx and Philosophy”, you can watch the recording here:

Ending
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Wishing you all a lovely Sunday, wherever you are.

Anthony Morgan
Managing Editor