Ecce Machina - Finding humanity in an AI-flooded world

Description:
Generative AI is considered by many to have passed the Turing test. While it is still possible to tell AI bots apart from humans if you try, in many applications they have become indistinguishable - except perhaps by their sheer data processing power, wildly surpassing any human. Perhaps they do not have consciousness, intelligence, empathy, feelings,... but they can simulate it remarkably well.

Increasingly, AI systems are being marketed as surrogates for humans in social roles: as artists who make us laugh or move us to tears, as therapists, doctors, educators and childcare workers with unlimited time and patience, as friends who support but never judge (at least not negatively), as a romantic partner who loves you - unconditionally.

At this junction where our social and emotional needs, societal problems such as loneliness, and employment shortages in social and creative roles, can seemingly be met with generative AI, we must pause and ask: which aspects of these capabilities represent progress, and which ones could amount to giving up the essence of our shared humanity?

In this symposium, speakers from computer science and AI, philosophy and psychology freely exchange their views on this question. Not to find hard answers or quick solutions, but to feed an overdue conversation about the extent to which we want AI to be a social entity in our lives and in the lives of our loved ones.

Agenda:
14:00-14:10: Opening.
14:10-15:50: Short talks by the speakers.
15:50-16:20: Coffee break.
16:20-18:00: Debate between the speakers and the public.

Speakers:

• Tijl De Bie (Prof. in data science and AI, Ghent University; PI of the ERC AdG VIGILIA)
• Louis de Diesbach (Technology ethicist and consultant at Boston Consultancy Group, author of Bonjour ChatGPT)
• Elly Konijn (Prof. in Media Psychology, VU Amsterdam; PI of the ERC AdG ROBOT-BOND)
• Sigrid Sterckx (Prof. of Ethics and Political and Social Philosophy, Ghent University)
• Hannu Toivonen (Prof. of Computer Science, University of Helsinki, and Francqui International Professor at VUB, KU Leuven, UAntwerp, UGent, UCLouvain)