Great Books for the Age of AI
Join us for a series of five sessions on foundational texts from various fields that help us to understand what it means to be human, and thereby to understand AI.
Schedule
Friday, September 25 at 11:30 AM | Dr. Katja VOgt | Fictionalism in AI
When we talk with an LLM, do we talk with a fictional persona? If yes, whose creation is this fiction? Or is the experience of talking with a person an illusion? Join Morningside for a seminar with Prof. Katja Vogt (Columbia) about whether we should be fictionalists or illusionists about AI. With regard to fictionalism, she will introduce an argument about systematic error. With regard to illusions, she will introduce an argument from Plato’s Republic—about persistently perceiving something one way, while thinking that it is another way.
Wednesday, October 14 at 6 PM | Dr. Gareth Williams | Seneca, Time, and Life-flow: Stoic Reflections on How to Structure Our Existence
This seminar explores how the Roman philosopher-politician, Lucius Annaeus Seneca (c. 2 BCE-65 CE), reflects in his Latin philosophical writings on the value of time in life, the importance of dwelling on the fact of our mortality through the different stages of our existence, and on how that perspective affects our ethical life-choices and outlook. Seneca was of course a privileged member of an aristocratic class in a slave society, and his life-reflections therefore presuppose an elite modus vivendi. But how might his writings still inform our own 21st-century lives in an age of AI, deep social unrest, economic stresses, and the hyper-speed of our existence?
Tuesday, October 27 at 6 PM | Dr. Katharina Volk | Cicero’s On the Commonwealth and the Political Imperative
Written in a time of political crisis, Cicero’s dialogue On the commonwealth (50s BCE) explores central questions of political thought: What is the ideal constitution? What does it take to be a leader? And is it worthwhile to get involved? Crucially, the author maintains that political engagement is a distinctive part of what makes us human: working for the common good is not only our duty but also our natural inclination, and we may even be rewarded for our political activities in the afterlife.
What then does it mean for us to offload political activity and decision-making to Artificial Intelligence? Are we still truly human if we “solve politics” using the machine?
Friday, November 13 at 12:30 PM | Dr. Megan Laverty | Hidden in Plain Sight: Reading Henry James’s The Beast in the Jungle
Henry James’s novella The Beast in the Jungle offers a striking contrast between its main characters, John Marcher and May Bartram. For May, everyday life becomes a scene of instruction: an occasion to deepen her responsiveness to experiences of contingency, love, and death. John, by contrast, struggles to be fully present in either language or life, failing to make sense of his experiences, most poignantly his grief. John waits for the transformative arrival of something extraordinary; May waits for him to discover that the extraordinary is already here. In an age of distraction and constant digital engagement, how do we find meaning in life? What are we waiting for? And can we learn to respond more fully to experience in thought, speech, and action?
Friday, November 20 at 12:30 PM | Nathaniel Ijams | E. M. Forster’s The Machine Stops
First published in 1909, E.M. Forster’s short story “The Machine Stops” has been hailed as the most prescient sci-fi story of the 20th century. His rebuttal to the utopian visions of H.G. Wells describes the spiritual dissatisfactions of a mother and son whose physical needs are placated by the global machine. When her faith in the Machine is tested by her son’s striving for an embodied life, and by the terror of silence when the Machine’s hum finally stops, does she reembrace her humanity, or will her only thought be for the “wish of the Machine?” This seminar will focus on the religious impulses of today’s technologists and the uses of dystopian fiction for reasoned discussion about AI.