[spsp-members] CfP ChatGPT and the Voices of Reason - Technology and Language

[Alfred Nordmann]

The eleventh issue of "Technology and Language" has appeared, and with 
it a new call that invites contributions at the intersection of 
philosophy of media and technology, theory of the public sphere, 
discourse ethics, governance.

https://soctech.spbstu.ru/en/issue/11/
www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/T_and_L

Guest-edited by Coreen McGuire and Natalia Nikiforova, the current issue 
is focused on „Mythologies: The Spirit of Technology in its Cultural 
Context.“ A new translation of Nikolai Berdyaev’s 1933 essay „Man and 
Machine“ with critical commentaries by Walker Trimble and Carl Mitcham 
sets the stage. Concrete exemplars are provided by the history of 
electricity in Russia, by narratives of resource scarcity in Germany, by 
an intercultural comparison of COVID-tracing apps. These are 
complemented by studies of memory in the museum and a Chinese myth of 
progress. In the last essay published during his life-time, Gernot Böhme 
engaged the powerful mythology of Yuval Noah Harari, critiquing his 
juxtaposition of a natural and an imagined order. Finally, Michael 
Kurtov provides a comparison of techno-religious cultures, one that 
revolves around the inevitability of major breakdowns (Russia) and one 
that believes in the efficacy of minor repairs (the West). Two 
contributed papers by Kevin Liggieri and Ryan Wittingslow concern 
anthropological issues in human-machine relations and the use of 
linguistic concepts in design.

New Call for Contributions: „ChatGPT and the Voices of Reason, 
Responsibility, and Regulation“ (Deadline:March 5, 2024)--
ChatGPT reconfigures the public sphere. It brings to a head the 
question: Must we mean what we say? How to take responsibility for 
artificially produced text - and how in different technopolitical 
traditions to regulate it. The special issue seeks to highlight two 
aspects. 1) Large language models and the culture of dialogue in the 
context of human-machine interaction: From the perspective of the 
history of Western thought, the "dialogue" that began in ancient Greece 
is not an exchange of information, but an act of cognition of a certain 
object through being present together. But what is a dialogue with 
ChatGPT? Will a new way of asking questions bring us into a new world of 
thinking? 2) Legal regulation of ChatGPT in various sociocultural 
contexts, technical and technocratic governance: Different technological 
paradigms or forms of technical intelligence respond differently to the 
challenges of the digital age. ChatGPT evokes technocracy and the idea 
of monitoring or shaping the "voices of reason" ("public sphere") and 
the technological "Lebenswelt" - with societies confronting the question 
of how an intelligence should behave and how it can be bound to the 
truth. All three aspects call for innovative models of adapting ChatGPT 
for use. (guest editors: Elena Seredkina, LIU Yongmou)

Other open calls (shortened):
”Future Writing“ (expressions of interest until July 20, 2023): Starting 
from a Derrideangrammatological review of the act of writing today, this 
special issueinvites us to consider writing-the-future along with the 
future-of-writing. The question is framed by our contemporary 
experience: Writing and the memory of the hand are becoming obsolete by 
way of typing and other technical proxies. At the same time, 
Chinese,Arabic, Roman typographies assume a new visuality and 
transformative power that veers toward the asemic, reminding us of 
enactment and embodiment in the digital world. (Guest editors: YAO 
Dajuin and LIN Nikita)

“Computational Models and Metaphors of the Mind” (Deadline: September 
5,2023) Is the meaning of a text accessible to machine learning? 
Questionslike these have become ever more puzzling. Mind, behavior, and 
machineare configured differently at different times, in different 
research programs. This concerns questions of intelligence, technology, 
andlanguage: What is consciousness, is it possible to artificially 
reproduce it? What is a language in terms of information theory and 
datamodels? Can a language be expressive without ontology or semantics? 
Howsignificant are shared features of brains and computers – e.g. 
neuralnetworks, and how significant are the differences between human 
andmachine intelligence – e.g. conceptual vs. statistical thinking? 
(guesteditor: Pavel Baryshnikov)

„Hermeneutics of Technology“ (Deadline: December 5, 2023) For a long 
time,hermeneutics was confined to the humanities and arts, to legal 
andreligious studies, and to the exegesis primarily of texts. In 
recentyears, however, the hermeneutics of science and technology came 
into itsown, along with questions of „scientific understanding“ or 
„hermeneuticTechnology Assessment,“ and along with the challenges posed 
byArtificial Intelligence or quantum technology which appear to 
eludehuman comprehension. Sense-making becomes especially important in 
aso-called culture of prediction, robustness, and reliability - with 
hermeneutics a critical method for analyzing and evaluating the various 
ways of making sense. (guest editors: WU Guolin and LUO Dong)

Beyond these calls for special topics, any submitted paper and 
interdisciplinary exploration at the interface of technology and 
language is always welcome. The next deadline for submitted papers in 
English or Russian is August 1, 2023 - these may include issues of 
scienceand fiction, the literary and artistic treatment of technological 
catastrophes, the languages of tastes and smells.

Queries, suggestions, and submissions can be addressed to 
soctech at spbstu.ru or to Daria Bylieva (bylieva_ds at spbstu.ru) and Alfred 
Nordmann (nordmann at phil.tu-darmstadt.de).

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Alfred Nordmann
Professor em. Institut für Philosophie, TU Darmstadt
Residenzschloss 1, 64283 Darmstadt, Germany (mailing address)
Glockenbau im Schloss S3|15 206 (physical address)
Homepage www.philosophie.tu-darmstadt.de/nordmann
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