LLM talk: the post-evolution of speech acts

This is an international conference, held March 21-22, 2025, in hybrid format at the University of Bucharest, Romania. A call for abstracts is below.

The conference is part of "The effects of LLM interaction in digital and virtual environments on TOM" ICUB grant in enhancing institutional performance at the University of Bucharest, gathering a research team from Philosophy, Linguistics, Cognitive Psychology and Evolutionary Biology.

A twin conference, "New Work in the Theory of Mind 2: interacting with large language models", held March 21-22 still, devoted to graduate students, postdocs and early career scholars, is organized in partnership between the Faculty of Philosophy and the Faculty of Psychology and Education Science, through its Department for Cognitive Science. More details about that event, including a call for abstracts for students and early career scholars, is here: https://philevents.org/event/show/132170

Both conferences target the post-evolutionary roles speech acts exhibit, starting from producing and decoding speech acts, to how we interpret the seemingly communicative behaviour of large language models, with a focus on social contexts that usually rely on mindreading (e.g. empathetic chats with bots).

The conference will have a mixed format, in that speakers may choose whether they present online only or face to face at the event's location (if so, their session will enjoy a live audience, but it will also be streamed to remote participants). Regular presentations will be 30 minutes long, followed by 10 minutes long Q&A and 10 minutes breaks.

The conference comes on the heels of "The Evolutionary Origins of Speech Acts" international hybrid workshop, held May 17th, 2023, with keynotes Mitch Green (Connecticut) and Bart Geurts (Radboud). More details about that event here: https://philevents.org/event/show/109005 

Panels include:

·        Do machines mean anything, and if so, what might that be?

·        Are machines capable of assertion?

·        How does human dialogue and the human-machine dialogue differ?  - game theory approaches

·        Can LLMs decode/ grasp speech acts of refusals and complaints in VR?

·        Game theory approaches to the use of indirect speech acts

·        Alternatives and variability in pragmatic inferences

Programme:

Friday, March 21 (“Constantin Noica” hall) - crossreferenced with the “How to Safely Interact with LLMs” peer learning workshop at UB

Chairs: Elena Roşu and Daniel Stancu

[earlier in the day: the hybrid “New work on TOM2: interacting with LLMs” conference, New Work on TOM 2 - interacting with LLMs - PhilEvents]

16.45 Opening remarks 

17.00 Sandra Brȃnzaru (U. Bucharest, CELFIS & ICUB & FPSE, f2f), “Do LLMs lack illocutionary force?”

18.00 Mitchell Green (keynote, f2f, University of Connecticut), “LLMs and language understanding” 

19.00 Patrick Butlin (Global Priorities Institute, Oxford University), “Can AI systems make assertions?”

Saturday, March 22 (“Tudor Vianu” hall)

Chair: Elena Roşu 

9.20 Laura Gorrieri (FINO, U. Torino, f2f), “LLMs are conversational zombies”

10.00 coffee break

10.30 Andreea Eşanu (New Europe College, f2f), “Doing and observing in sequence models – a discussion of auto-suggestive delusions”

11.10 Paul Buzilă (U. Bucharest, CELINE Neurolinguistics Circle, f2f), "What does 'meaning' mean and why do LLMs seem to lack understanding?"

12.00 Jan Michel (Heinrich Heine Universität, f2f), "LLMs in Scientific Discovery: Proxy, Partner, or Pioneer?"

12.45 lunch break

Chair: Daniel Stancu

14.20 Chris Cousens (Glasgow), “LLMs in Large Language Games”

15.00 Leonard Dung (Ruhr-Bochum), “An argument for the possibility of conscious non-biological systems”

15.40 Damian Mingle (SwitchPoint Ventures), “LLMs as Post-Human Speech Agents”

16.20 Ioan Muntean (UT Rio Grande Valley & UI Urbana Champaign), “Chain-of-thought as explanations: decomposability, compressibility, comprehensibility (and causation?) in the LLM”

17.00 Concluding remarks (Mircea Dumitru, head of doctoral school in Philosophy at the University of Bucharest, vice-president of the Romanian Academy)

[later in the day: the “Rethinking TOM and ASD” conference, Rethinking ToM and ASD - PhilEvents]

Registering and other details: [email protected] on or before March 18th to receive Zoom details.