Artificial Intelligence - Hype or Myth?

Walther Ch. Zimmerli

The lecture series is part of the research programme Desirable Digitalization: Rethinking AI for Just and Sustainable Futures at the Center for Science and Thought (CST) of the University of Bonn. It brings together international experts working on central questions about AI technologies in interaction with societies of the present and future. 

Since Chat GPT we are witnessing another global AI hype. In his public Mercator-lecture Swiss philosopher Walther Ch. Zimmerli, at present Mercator Visiting Professor for Artificial Intelligence in the Human Context at CST, tries to unveil the hidden mechanism behind the undeniable success-stories of AI by reconstructing its history of recurring hype-cycles beginning with what he calls the "Dartmouth Conspiracy" and Turing's "rehabilitation of deception". The underlying suggestive power of the idea of AI, however,must be attributed to its mythical character as is demonstrated both by contrasting the Gartner hype-cycle theory with the philosophy of myth (Blumenberg), and by semiotically explaining it in terms of analogies and metaphors as well as contrasting it with the Singularity- and the Posthumanism-Myth (Kurzweil).

The lecture will be held in English and recorded. If you would like to attend the lecture in person, please register with Tanja Mlinski ([email protected]). After the lecture, we invite everybody to join us for a reception and to get in touch with Mercator Visiting Professor Walther Ch. Zimmerli and the rest of our team.