[Linganth] LLMs and Ling Anth Reading Group - Webb Keane - Dec 16 - 18:00-20:00 CET

[Language Machines]

Dear Language Machines Network,

We'd like to invite you to our next reading group meeting. We'll discuss
chapter 5 *"Superhumans: Artificial Intelligence, Spirits and Shamans
Abstract for ELAN"* of Webb Keane's new book *Animals, Robots, Gods*
on *December
16, from 18:00-20:00 CET*. See below for the schedule of future meetings.


*Abstract: This chapter is part of a book about human relations with near-
and quasi- humans, as well as actual humans who are unable to act the part.
Please understand that this book is an effort to communicate with a
non-anthropological, even non-academic readership. Therefore, although one
of its subtexts is to convey some of the basic insights of semiotic and
linguistic anthropology (especially regarding social interaction), I do not
say so--I believe the word "semiotic" never appears in the book. I don't
want to scare away the readers I have in mind, people who may be educated
and intellectually curious, but are outsiders to our fields. Here are some
overarching claims the book makes: (1) Most of the discussion of new
technology (my focus is on self- driving vehicles, robots, and generative
AI) is confined to "western," rationalistic, secular elites with little or
no knowledge of or interest in perspectives from non-elite people of "the
west," the "non-western," the religious, or simply people in the past. The
book argues something that may be conventional for anthropologists, but is
utterly controversial for most philosophers, ethicists, or computer
scientists, that we need to learn from those other perspectives. (2) Some
of the moral panic and utopian exhilaration around new technologies comes
from the assumption that what we are encountering is wholly unprecedented.
The book argues that certain ways of responding to new technologies are
variations on familiar practices like divination, consulting oracles, or
sacrificing animals. (3) Parenthetically, the book also tries to model one
way we anthropologists can learn from one another's particularistic
studies. (4) Using examples from across the ethnographic record, it looks
at people dealing with loved ones in vegetative states, hunters and
sacrificers interacting with the animals they kill, arguments around organ
transplants, dealings with avatars and shrines, anthropomorphic relations
with robots, and quasi-religious responses to GenAI. (5) The overarching
claim is that when people treat near-humans as moral subjects, especially
through second person address, they are taking responsibility for what
their own lives require and assuring that the world is not ethically
neutral.*
We look forward to seeing you there!

Anna, Siri, Michael

RSVP here: languagemachinesnetwork at gmail.com to receive the Zoom link and
the PDF of the article (not to be circulated, please).

*Schedule:*
December 16 - Webb Keane (Michigan)
January 20 - Courtney Handman (UT Austin)
February 17 - Ole Pütz (Bielefeld)
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