Sponsor
German Studies
Co-Sponsor(s)
Dean of Humanities; English; Franklin Humanities Institute (FHI); Literature
Structure, Sign, and Play in the Age of AI
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Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/structure-sign-and-play-in-the-age-of-ai-t…
Structure, Sign, and Play in the Age of AI marks sixty years since Derrida's 1966 lecture at Johns Hopkins, the moment structuralism supposedly gave way to poststructuralism. Structuralism is currently experiencing a revival. Contemporary Al technologies depend on data sets so large that the structuralist hypothesis-Ferdinand de Saussure's notion of meaning as a differential "web" of signifiers-seems almost realized. Yet the age of Al is most commonly characterized as "postmodern," filled with "floating signifiers" that are "ungrounded" and lacking any clear relationship to truth. This conference proposes to have a fight that never really happened, between structuralism and poststructuralism, now re-situated in a media context that presents their intertwined doctrines as more plausible than the technical sciences that created Al itself. We will use the anniversary of this watershed moment from the humanist past as an occasion to sort through the murky cultural present.
For the full program see: https://carolina-duke-grad.german.duke.edu/news/structure-sign-and-play…
Structure, Sign, and Play in the Age of AI marks sixty years since Derrida's 1966 lecture at Johns Hopkins, the moment structuralism supposedly gave way to poststructuralism. Structuralism is currently experiencing a revival. Contemporary Al technologies depend on data sets so large that the structuralist hypothesis-Ferdinand de Saussure's notion of meaning as a differential "web" of signifiers-seems almost realized. Yet the age of Al is most commonly characterized as "postmodern," filled with "floating signifiers" that are "ungrounded" and lacking any clear relationship to truth. This conference proposes to have a fight that never really happened, between structuralism and poststructuralism, now re-situated in a media context that presents their intertwined doctrines as more plausible than the technical sciences that created Al itself. We will use the anniversary of this watershed moment from the humanist past as an occasion to sort through the murky cultural present.
For the full program see: https://carolina-duke-grad.german.duke.edu/news/structure-sign-and-play…
