Event Timeslots (1)
Wednesday
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This course is taught en bloc. For dates and times, please see the entry on eCampus. This advanced seminar examines some philosophical and ethical issues of current human interaction with large language models. We begin with deceptively simple questions: can such systems genuinely speak, or do they merely simulate linguistic agency? As we ourselves do obviously talk to them: with whom, if anyone, are we in dialogue when we converse with them?
From there we investigate questions concerning morality and ethics: What kinds of moral competencies, should and could these systems possess? Can morality be operationalized in code, and if so, through which technical and conceptual architectures?
Furthermore, the seminar addresses the possibility of friendship, intimacy, and even love with artificial interlocutors. Are such relations coherent, illusory, or potentially transformative forms of sociality? Finally, we assess opportunities and risks: personal support and empowerment, epistemic access, but also dependency, manipulation and shifts in human self-understanding that might affect not only our personal but also political lives.
The literature will be provided via Moodle at the beginning of the semester.
Exams:
Kleine Leistung": Regular short writing assignments.
Große Leistung": Term paper or oral exam