Evolving Understanding
Evolution of Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humanities
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cem Zeytinoglu
Within the past thirty years, AI technology has developed into a significant level that affected human communication in a critical way. The future development of AI appears to have revolutionary and momentous changes for humanities and the entire human civilization. This paper focuses on certain aspects of AI development and its effects on humanities from a critical viewpoint, studying both the positive and the negative consequences that are likely to emerge in near future. The paper uses a rhetorical approach and humanities-based methodology that is aligned with philosophy of communication orientation. The points of investigation are planned towards the following areas: AI use in music, literature, and arts; AI utilization in organizational decision making and policy development; AI use in medical and academic research (including but not limited to medicine and sciences); and AI design for human assistance, companionship, and therapeutic support. Of course, the scope of all these examples is too large to be addressed in a single study, however, the expectation is to initiate a critical analysis for potential conversation and discussion topics in anticipation for possible benefits and unexpected harms that might influence human experience in general.
What Can Kant Tell Us About AI Ethics?
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Richard Dean
Immanuel Kant, of course, does not say anything about artificial intelligence. But his theory of action can tell provide some useful guidance in thinking about the moral capacities and incapacities of artificial intelligence. A Kantian framework suggests the dangers of a quasi-agent who has the power of choice without freedom. Furthermore, the idea of a self-conscious and general AI raises the possibility of a type of genuine agent that Kant himself thought impossible -- a being with freedom but without the moral feelings that make it possible for moral requirements to move an an agent to action. The possibility of such a general AI urges a close consideration of Kant's claims about what finite moral agents are necessarily like, and justifies concerns that research into general AI could eventually produce something morally monstrous.
Digital Humanities as the Platform for Universal Humanism: A Path Towards a Peaceful Coexistence Among Humans, the Cosmos, and Gods View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Tony (Tone) Svetelj
Digital humanities with its systematic use of digital resources in the humanities fosters a new way of research, teaching, and publications, based on collaborative, transdisciplinary, and computational engagement. As such, digital humanities present a new platform for exploration of unheard of and not yet disclosed potential in humanities on the universal level. Incorporating the common denominators of various past and present theological, spiritual, philosophical, cultural, and political interpretations about the essence of being human, digital humanities allow us to comprehend anew the perennial question of what it means to be human, or what is even more important, how to become more human. Following this logic, digital humanities open the door to a much more complex and integrative understanding of the Ancient Greek belief that man exists at the center of the universe, as expressed by Protagoras in his claim that “man is the measure of all things.” While the Ancient Greeks were able to tackle this inquiry only within their own religious, philosophical, and cultural environment, the digital humanities are invited to allow us to create a humanitas rooted in moral and spiritual education, magnanimity, dignity, respect, wit, gracefulness, sensitivity, mildness, kindness, and generosity as they are understood in the past and present cultures, traditions, and religions. In short, digital humanities should be viewed as the instrument necessary for creation of an universal humanism in the sense of the Greek katholou (καθόλου) comprising both universality (universal, general, altogether), as well as wholeness (entire, at all, whole, all inclusive).
