The Social Ontology of AI
While typical AI user interfaces are designed to facilitate the illusion of a person-to-person interaction, the user is, of course, engaging with a vast ‘social’ network distributed across human, non-biological and digital nodes, enabled by an infrastructure comprising human intellectual labour, data centres, energy resources etc. How should this sociality be modelled? What is its ontological status? The participation in social networks that enables human intelligence is reflected in the very nature of that intelligence – but does this, as is often claimed, provide a model for understanding the relation between AI and its (very different) enabling conditions? The Kyoto workshop will be devoted to addressing these and related questions. In addition to the workshop, Forum Humanum Fellows are invited to attend the inaugural Kyōto Conference Toward the Realization of a ‘Multilayered Society of Values’, which will be organized by the KIP from September 23-24 and will be attended by leading philosophers from value theory and other sectors (especially media and economics) around the globe.
Dates: September 22-26, 2025
Presented by KIP