Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 249.
        Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
                      Hosted by DH-Cologne
                       www.dhhumanist.org
                Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org




        Date: 2024-11-21 11:16:11+00:00
        From: Manfred Thaller <manfred.thaller@uni-koeln.de>
        Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.236: effects on the academic ecology

Dear Willard,

> Yesterday I posted an advert for 30 tenured & tenure-track
> positions in AI and related areas. Yes, I know: few if any
> members of Humanist could possibly qualify for any of these
> positions. So why post the advert here? For what it is worth,
> I'd very much welcome someone asking that question and
> speculating on an answer...

this comes a bit late, however let me react to your original question by
another one. What is the definition of AI behind your own long term
personal interest in it?

I tend to admit that currently I am quite disinterested in the label: I
have the feeling, that at the moment "AI" is simply a synonym for
"computational solution". As each reasonably modern washing machine can
be described as a rule based reactive agent (and as such definitely is a
topic that is covered by traditional AI) this is obviously not
completely wrong. But such blurred definitions, I think, are responsible
for much of the PR aware discussions of the threats of autonomous
general artificial intelligences which tomorrow will kill off humanity,
miraculously born out of the stochastic recombination of uninterpreted
character strings. (Well, Venus was born out of uninterpreted foam; but
I thought we had made a few epistemic advances since than.)

While I take a certain perverse delight in LLMs showing how much of the
creativity of the so called creative industries (one might even think of
some branches of literature - but there, possibly, lies madness) can be
successfully synthesized by stochastic recombination of uninterpreted
signs, I'm really wondering, whether we should not be somewhat more
precise what we mean by this specific character string "AI", which in my
opinion clearly should be interpreted.

Coming closer to your original question: Personally I would very much
like to know what currently happens in Bavaria. In the previous hype
cycle (autonomous cars) that German state decided to install 100 tenured
professorships for "AI", understood as the art of, essentially,
autonomous cars. How these chairs now will help Bavaria to stay at the
cutting edge of LLMs I'm looking very much forward to learn.

I said, "coming closer to your original question". Could it possibly be,
that it had something to do with what I grumbled about above?

As ever,
Manfred

Am 13.11.24 um 08:42 schrieb Humanist:
>                Humanist Discussion Group, Vol. 38, No. 236.
>          Department of Digital Humanities, University of Cologne
>                        Hosted by DH-Cologne
>                         www.dhhumanist.org
>                  Submit to: humanist@dhhumanist.org
>
>
>
>
>          Date: 2024-11-12 08:48:07+00:00
>          From: maurizio lana <maurizio.lana@uniupo.it>
>          Subject: Re: [Humanist] 38.233: effects on the academic ecology?
>
> hi Willard, thank you for the counts, i wasn't aware of /30/ tenured &
> tenure-track positions.
> it's a new sacred fascinans et tremendum with its cult: you cannot stay
> in the academic/research realm if you don't proclaim your involvement
> with AI - even if you are only doing good old statistical calculations
> which is overshadowing truly good uses of AI systems
> e.g realtime bidirectional translation
>
> Maurizio
>
> Il 12/11/24 09:02, Humanist ha scritto:
>> Yesterday I posted an advert for 30 tenured & tenure-track
>> positions in AI and related areas. Yes, I know: few if any
>> members of Humanist could possibly qualify for any of these
>> positions. So why post the advert here? For what it is worth,
>> I'd very much welcome someone asking that question and
>> speculating on an answer...
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> non ci sono altri giorni
> che questi nostri giorni
> italo calvino, il cavaliere inesistente
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Maurizio Lana
> Università del Piemonte Orientale
> Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici
> Piazza Roma 36 - 13100 Vercelli


--
Prof.em.Dr. Manfred Thaller
formerly University at Cologne /
zuletzt Universität zu Köln


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