Creative Language Technologies

Roxana Girju

Creative Language Technologies explores the multifaceted aspects of this emerging field, at the intersection of Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Medicine (STEMM) with the broader sector of Humanities, Social Sciences, Arts and Culture (HSSAC). The podcast aims to explore creative themes with social impact, revitalize technological imagination, and transform current practices of language technologies. New episodes, uploaded once or twice a month (usually on a Thursday), tackle diverse topics through stimulating interviews with experts in these fields.

  1. 30/04/2023

    Ecological Psychology and Artificial Intelligence

    This is episode #31 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 27th of April, 2023. My invited guest this month is Tony Chemero,  a Distinguished Research Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at the University of Cincinnati (UC), and a primary member of both the Center for Cognition, Action, and Perception and the Strange Tools Research Lab. In his research, both philosophical and empirical, he addresses questions related to nonlinear dynamical modeling, ecological psychology, complex systems, phenomenology, and social cognition. He is the author of more than 100 articles and the books Radical Embodied Cognitive Science (2009, MIT Press) and, with Stephan Käufer, Phenomenology (2015, Polity Press; second edition, 2021). In this episode, I asked Tony to introduce the field of econogical psychology and share his views on its potential importance to artificial intelligence (details are provided in the interview notes). Here is the show. Show Notes: - Ecological psychology (definition and importance) vs. traditional cognitive science - The replication crisis in psychology - Is ecological psychology a science? - The concept of affordances: definition matters - Interpersonal synergies and alignment systems (especially online) and their implication for interface design and AI - Can AI help us understand one another? Can ecological psychology help us design platforms that support social connections online? - Ecological psychology and the Metaverse Tony’s books: Radical Embodied Cognitive Science: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516471/radical-embodied-cognitive-science/ Phenomenology: An Introduction, 2nd Edition: https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Phenomenology:+An+Introduction,+2nd+Edition-p-9781509540655

  2. 24/03/2023

    Objective Measures, Subjective Experience, and Metacognition

    This is episode #30 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 23rd of March, 2023.  A couple of month ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Stephen Fleming, Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience and Royal Society at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London, where he leads the Metacognition Group. He is also a Group Leader at the Max Planck UCL Centre for Computational Psychiatry and Principal Investigator at the Wellcome Centre for Human Neuroimaging. The group’s research focuses on understanding the relationship between objective measures (behaviour and brain activity) and subjective experience and metacognition. Steve’s research on metacognition has been recognised by several early career awards including the British Academy Wiley Prize in Psychology (2016), a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Psychology (2018), and the British Psychological Society Spearman Medal (2019). He was a previous Executive Director of the Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness (2014-2020), and is an editor at the journals PNAS Nexus and Mind and Language. He writes widely for a general audience, including articles for Aeon, New Scientist and Scientific American, and is the author of Know Thyself, a trade book on the science of metacognition. In the interview, we touched on various aspects of metacognition as well as on its connection to artificial intelligence (details are provided in the notes from the interview). Here is the show. Show Notes: - Metacognition (definition and objective measures) - Metacognition vs. intelligence - Strategies to improve our metacognitive awareness and abilities: self-assessment vs. external feedback - Explainable AI (can metacognition help us design AI that can explain how it reached its decision?) - Current large language models (GPT-3, chatGPT) and some of their problems - Social media: how would knowledge of meta-cognition can help us design spaces that support social connections  (and how to reduce misinformation online) - The promise of artificial therapy - The objective and the subjective (How should / can objective science make room for the subjective in its own right?) Steve’s books and lab: Know Thyself https://www.amazon.com/Know-Thyself-Self-Awareness-Stephen-Fleming/dp/1541672844 The MetaLab http://metacoglab.org/

  3. 17/02/2023

    Representing Reality: Implications for Artificial Intelligence

    This is episode #29 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 16th of February, 2023. A couple of month ago, I had the pleasure to interview Dr. Bernardo Kastrup, a scientist with a Ph.D. in philosophy (ontology, philosophy of mind) and another Ph.D. in computer engineering (reconfigurable computing, artificial intelligence). Bernardo is particularly known for his work at the forefront of the modern renaissance of metaphysical idealism, the notion that reality is essentially mental. Covered...

  4. 04/01/2023

    On Experience, Socio-Cultural Practices, and Technology

    This is episode #28 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 26th of December, 2022. My invited speaker is Dr. Erik Myin, professor of philosophy at the University of Antwerp. He has published extensively on philosophy of mind and cognition, sometimes alone, sometimes with scientists or other philosophers. With Dan Hutto he wrote "Radicalizing Enactivism" and "Evolving Enactivism", both published with MIT Press. In these books, they defend the point that cognition is embodied interaction rather ...

  5. 24/11/2022

    Embodied Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence

    This is episode #27 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 17th of November, 2022.  My invited speaker today is Dr. Mark James, a philosopher and theoretical cognitive scientist who adopts an embodied approach to questions about the development of habits in both individuals and collectives. Specifically, he is interested in how the designed world shapes such habits, and how we can leverage this understanding to address questions of well-being. More recently, Mark has begun researching how psychological flexibility, our ability to switch between habits, is scaffolded by our bodies and environments. Mark hosts the Connectomics podcast, wherein he speaks with theorists and practitioners about the intersection of embodied cognitive science, culture, technology and design. Mark is also a meditator, musician and martial artist, and a lover of good stories. We started the show talking about his journey in this field and then delved deeper into aspects of Embodied Cognitive Science and its methodologies. We also looked into ways of studying subjective experience scientifically, and debated if subjective experience can be intersubjectively verified. Mark also elaborated Tom Froese’s proposal for an Irruption Theory of Consciousness, a new theory of consciousness that integrates an embodied-enactive account of basic mind with radical formulations of the freedom and efficacy of intentional agency. The second part of the interview covered the future of digital technologies (including immersive technologies like mixed reality and artificial intelligence) — and if/how they can be (re)shaped by embodied cognitive science.  Here is the show. Show Notes: - Embodied Cognitive Science - definition and methodologies - The scientific study of subjective experience - Can subjective experience be intersubjectively verified? - Tom Froese’s proposal for an Irruption Theory of Consciousness - The future of digital technologies (including immersive technologies like MR and AI)  The Connectomics podcast - https://podcasts.apple.com/ie/podcast/connectomics/id1606319926 www.markmjames.com

  6. 09/10/2022

    Charity fundraising: Storytelling, Engagement, and Immersive Technologies

    This is episode #26 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 29th of September, 2022.  Today I sat down with Dr. Andrea Macrae, a researcher in the fields of cognitive narratology and stylistics at Oxford Brookes University, in Oxford, England.  She works on literature and on non-literary discourse - most recently the discourse of charity fundraising. In her research she studies the relationships between text, readers' interpretations, and broader socio-cultural narratives and ways of thinking. Our discussion theme was the discourse of charity fundraising — a timely topic, as we live in a hyperconnected world where everybody fights for our attention. Specifically, we talked about the role of charity fundraising letters and touched on how research within the sector has only recently begun to connect with theories of narrative. This was important to address given some disconnect between the strategies employed by academic philanthropic researchers and charities   on how to measure the engagement with the beneficiary’s story that would eventually drive donation.  The second part of the interview covered the the future of digital technologies as contributing to storytelling for non-profit fundraising. Although virtual reality (VR) has already started to play an important role in charity fundraising, Andrea believes that traditional fundraising letters are here to stay. Here is the show. Show Notes: - the discourse of charity fundraising and fundraising letters - some disconnect between the strategies employed by academic philanthropic researchers and charities on how to measure the engagement - the role of empathy in the context of charity fundraising letters; the shift from individual to ‘universal compassion’ - the future of digital technologies as contributing to storytelling for non-profit fundraising (next 10-20 years) - engagement with the donors in immersive environments (AR/VR) - ethical implications of individual’s story as representative of others Relevant papers: Andrea Macrae; Small Stories in Charity Fundraising Letters and the Ethics of Interwoven Individualism. Poetics Today 1 June 2022; 43 (2): 219–241. Link to Dr. Macrae’s professional webpage: https://www.brookes.ac.uk/profiles/staff/andrea-macrae

  7. 23/09/2022

    On Intersubjectivity, Lived Experience, and AI

    This is episode #25 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 22nd of September, 2022. My invited speaker today is Dr. Aleš Oblak, who identifies himself as a cognitive scientist more than any other field relating to the sciences of the mind. He likes to describe himself as someone who holds somewhat incompatible views about the nature of the human mind: on the one hand, he believes human beings are irreducibly complex and require a qualitative approach; on the other hand, he argues that our...

  8. 25/08/2022

    Diagnostic Agents and Sensory Knowledge: Views from Ethnography and Immersive Technologies

    This is episode #24 of the podcast and it’s Thursday, the 25th of August, 2022. My invited speaker today is Dr. Anna Harris, an anthropologist and Associate Professor in the Department of Society Studies at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. Previously, she worked as a doctor in Australia and the UK. For the past 10 years she has been doing ethnographic studies of medicine.Her approach to the social study of medicine is grounded in ethnographic studies of contemporary medical prac...

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About

Creative Language Technologies explores the multifaceted aspects of this emerging field, at the intersection of Science, Technology, Engineering, Math and Medicine (STEMM) with the broader sector of Humanities, Social Sciences, Arts and Culture (HSSAC). The podcast aims to explore creative themes with social impact, revitalize technological imagination, and transform current practices of language technologies. New episodes, uploaded once or twice a month (usually on a Thursday), tackle diverse topics through stimulating interviews with experts in these fields.

Information

  • Creator
    Roxana Girju
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2023
  • Episodes
    32
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Creative Language Technologies Podcast
  • Show Website
    Creative Language Technologies