Speaker

Yasmeen Arif is Professor of Sociology, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Delhi NCR. She is currently a Distinguished Fellow at the Max Weber Kolleg, University of Erfurt. Her current research and writing follow two threads, both informed by a bio-political orientation towards life and the social. The first is a biopolitical critique of identity in politics tentatively titled Life, Per se: The Government of Identity, which follows from her book, Life, Emergent: The Social in the Afterlives of Violence (2016, University of Minnesota Press). The second thread explores new computational and AI environments with a focus on the social. A constant parallel genre of research and writing has been a commitment to the geo-politics of knowledge production and epistemology in the contemporary social sciences. 

Abstract

Large Language Models (LLMs) form a ground of convergence between computational capacity and language (as well as human cognition, as many might argue) in unprecedented ways – a convergence that occupies a growing literature. 

Using OpenAI’s Chat GPT, I explore a somewhat counter-intuitive concern - rather than following the emerging dilemmas between human language and humanist philosophical conundrums on one hand and on the other, 'literate' machines, I ask what language do machines indeed speak. The intention is to undergird a social imaginary in LLMs that is coherent and systemic, amenable to being called a simulated social, where simulation is not false nor farcical, but rather a technological craft of meaning making that coheres a machinic reality around a machinic language.

This intent begins to address the gap so far in the literature about how the social begins to emerge and what it might be, in the ubiquitous universe of LLMs. Two perspectives so far under explored in the emerging literature are privileged here. Recognizing language as both a social fact par excellence (pace Durkheim) and as a sign system (pace Saussure) the discussion proceeds, first, by aligning the linguistic sign with computing technique in granular detail in ways that has not yet been undertaken. Second, it calibrates sign systems with meaning making by exploring how metaphoric and metonymic constructs (pace Jakobson) in LLMs simulate a social. This, I expect, leads us to paying good heed to what language machines do indeed speak and what is the social they create.

This event is run by the King's Anthropology Network, which strives to connect anthropologists and those with an interest in the discipline, from across King's. The network provides a space for intellectual exchange, a bulletin of relevant events, and a means to organise around common concerns. If you are interested in joining, please contact Farhan Samanani (farhan.samanani@kcl.ac.uk).

Tea/Coffee from 15:30-16:00; seminar from 16:00-17:30