The Philosophy of Deep Learning – NYU Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness

The Center is co-sponsoring a two-day conference on the philosophy of deep learning, organized by Ned Block (NYU), David Chalmers (NYU) and Raphaël Millière (Columbia), co-sponsored by the Presidential Scholars in Society and Neuroscience program at Columbia University. The conference will explore current issues in AI research from a philosophical perspective, with particular attention to recent work on deep artificial neural networks. The goal is to bring together philosophers and scientists who are thinking about these systems in order to gain a better understanding of their capacities, their limitations, and their relationship to human cognition. The conference will focus especially on topics in the philosophy of cognitive science (rather than on topics in AI ethics and safety). A pre-conference debate on Friday, March 24th will tackle the question "Do large language models need sensory grounding for meaning and understanding?" Speakers include Jacob Browning (New York University), David Chalmers (New York University), Yann LeCun (New York University), and Ellie Pavlick.