ARNI Distinguished Seminar Series: Ellie Pavlick (Brown University)

Ellie Pavlick
(Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Linguistics, Brown University and Director, NSF Institute on Interaction for AI Assistants (ARIA))

Location: ZI Kavli Auditorium 9th Floor
Time: 3:00pm

Title: (How) Does AI Think?

Abstract: The increasingly human-like behavior of AI has led to a fascination with ascribing it human-like internal properties — notions like thinking, understanding, and reasoning. In this talk, I will take a step back and discuss a range of results from the past several years of interpretability which present an increasingly consistent view of AI’s internal processing. Specifically, I will discuss how AI represents a surprising amount of internal structure, and yet remains primarily idiosyncratic and context-sensitive. I use the opportunity to talk about the philosophical nature of human-AI comparison–when such analogies are fruitful for scientific and technological progress, and when they mislead.

Zoom: Upon request @[email protected]