[SydPhil] University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series, Hong Yu Wong, (Tübingen)

[Ryan Cox]

Hi everyone,

This week's speaker in the University of Sydney Philosophy Seminar Series is Hong Yu Wong, (Tübingen)

The title of the talk is "Studying Artificial Agency: a Methodological Proposal". Here is an abstract for the talk:

Can artificial systems act? In the literature we find two camps: sceptics and believers. But the issue of whether artificial systems can act and, if so, how, has not been systematically discussed. This is a foundational question for the ethics of AI. I sketch a methodological approach to investigating the agency of artificial systems from architectural and behavioural perspectives. The architectural approach emphasises that certain kinds of underlying mechanism or organisational structures are required for the capacity to act. The approach is like that of a physiologist. From this perspective, agency is one of the proper functions of the organism and the aim is to understand the underlying mechanisms which underpin it (Tomasello 2022). In contrast, the behavioural approach stresses not internal structure, but behaviour. Does the system look like it is acting? (Turing 1950.) Can the behaviour of the system only be made sense of by attributing agency? (Dennett 1989.) The approach is like that of a field biologist/anthropologist encountering a new species/system in a ‘first contact’ situation. They can’t analyse the system by understanding its internal structure and dynamics. All they have is behavioural observation. As examples, I will examine two case studies: AlphaGo and ChatGPT3. I argue that future research must combine both architectural and behavioural perspectives so as to make progress. This will allow us to have more fine-grained analysis of the specific capacities underlying general behavioural abilities, so that we can be confident of genuine competence at some level.

The seminar will take place at 3:30pm on Wednesday Oct 30 in the Philosophy Seminar Room (N494).

Enquiries about the seminar series can be directed to ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au

Ryan Cox
Associate Lecturer in Philosophy
Discipline of Philosophy
School of Humanities
University of Sydney
ryan.cox at sydney.edu.au
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