KKAlba Ramírez Guijarro, a doctoral candidate at the Department of Philosophy, explores the intersections between Wittgenstein’s philosophy and artificial intelligence in her dissertation. In this interview, she discusses the connections between the philosopher and the technology that is currently fundamentally changing our societies.
Is it possible to explain your work to a layperson? How would you explain what you are working on to your neighbor over the garden fence in a few sentences?
I am focused on philosophy of language and epistemology. My research raises Wittgenstein’s thought and its connection with artificial intelligence. To my neighbor I would say that questions like “Can a machine think?” or “Is a ‘language game’ possible without a ‘form of life’?” are important in Wittgenstein’s work, and they have consequences for the development of AI.
Ludwig Wittgenstein died in 1951; a few years later, the term ‘artificial intelligence’ was introduced for the first time. What connections do you see between Wittgenstein and artificial intelligence?
Terms are created after the thing they designate is discovered or invented. The term ‘artificial intelligence’ was coined after Wittgenstein’s death, but proto-concepts and questions related to AI already existed. Since what existed at the origins of AI is very different from what we have today, the meanings of the term have evolved over time. I find the analysis of that development important, where the origin is fundamental. In the origins of AI there are questions that we can find in Wittgenstein’s works. In 1937, Turing tried to address the simulation of cognitive processes with machines. Wittgenstein and Turing had successive discussions in Cambridge in the 1930s. They had different approaches, but they shared intellectual concerns and questions. I think both Wittgenstein and AI invite us to reflect on how we relate to the world and what role language plays both in our lives and in knowledge.
How can Ludwig Wittgenstein’s work support today’s discourse on artificial intelligence?
Wittgenstein’s notion of ‘language games’ has influenced current natural language processing (NLP) in artificial intelligence. Large companies (such as Google) made improvements based on Wittgensteinian ideas (implemented by computational linguists). The American mathematician and computer scientist John F. Sowa claims that the key for understanding the relationship between natural and artificial languages is found in ‘language games’. Wittgenstein’s influence on machine translation can be traced in the pioneering work in linguistics of his student Margaret Masterman. Wittgenstein posited how the meaning of words is derived from their use, something that will prove crucial in empirical work on the distributional hypothesis in AI. Some algorithms (such as Word2Vec) allow a word to be predicted by context, or context can be predicted from a word. Other current algorithms (such as FGREP) use retrospective sentences and semantic frameworks. The Glove algorithm is also a clear example; it is based on a basic structuralist assumption that meaning arises through use and is determined by context. I think that Wittgenstein’s approach in his Philosophical Investigations, due to his analysis of natural language, is very revealing for AI. There are also many matters in AI that can be considered from Wittgenstein’s perspective, such as consciousness in technology, the possibility of a private language, metacreation…
How did you come to this topic yourself and work on your dissertation today?
I studied my master’s degree in Philosophy at the University of Salzburg because the department there is analytic. I was interested in Wittgenstein and believed he was an analytic philosopher. I had a great experience in Salzburg, but I discovered that Wittgenstein was not analytic and that my sensibility is far from analytic philosophy. This proved very helpful in redirecting my path toward a doctorate. I didn’t want to continue with analytic philosophy, but I did want to continue reading Wittgenstein. I considered writing a dissertation on Wittgenstein and later decided to connect him to artificial intelligence. This topic inspires me to think about questions of language and epistemology through new lenses.
Are you receiving financial support for your doctoral project?
I am pursuing this doctorate with a fellowship from the Ramón Areces Foundation (Spain). My gratitude towards this foundation is immense. Ramón Areces was a businessman who studied in different countries and founded El Corte Inglés (one of the leading companies in my country). He created (in 1976) a foundation in Madrid to promote knowledge and culture. I find it inspiring… People and organizations like this move the world. The Foundation aims to support the talent and academic work of Spanish researchers abroad. They spend an average of twelve million euros per year on research projects. The calls for proposals are highly competitive, so I feel very lucky. Currently, the Foundation supports 57 projects in the Sciences (such as Physics or Biomedicine), 50 in the Social Sciences, and 5 in the Humanities. Among the humanities projects is my doctoral project in Klagenfurt, along with four students working on other humanities projects (in Oxford, Rotterdam, Edinburgh, and Cambridge).
Why did you choose Klagenfurt? Did any of your professors influenced your choice to pursue a PhD in Philosophy?
I chose the University of Klagenfurt for my PhD because Professor Volker Munz is here. He has been studying Wittgenstein for many years. Volker was very generous with me in everything, from the first day! When I arrived in Klagenfurt, he was waiting for me at the train station and helped me settle in. I will never forget it. Volker is a good professor, who I think contributes significantly to the spread of Wittgenstein’s thought. He welcomed me to his seminars, workshops, summer schools, symposia… I think I am also in this PhD program thanks to the lectures and support of former professors, among whom I would like to highlight Alfonso Drake (Comillas Pontifical University, Madrid) and Julien Murzi (University of Salzburg). Another person whose guidance is important for my work is Professor Alois Pichler (University of Bergen). He is my second supervisor and my mentor thanks to the YSMP program at the University of Klagenfurt. I am looking forward to my research stay (next spring) with Alois in Norway.
How did you come to study philosophy?
Studying philosophy was a passionate decision, like all my good decisions. I may have been wrong with rational choices, but never with choices based on passion. I started reading philosophy as a teenager and it was love on the front line. I think Plato and Nietzsche were the main influences on my early interest in philosophy, but then came other philosophers who have shaped my way of looking at the world. I was able to study philosophy with a full academic scholarship from the Loyola Centro Foundation in Spain. The Jesuits gave me an opportunity that I would not have had otherwise. I will always be grateful to them because they changed my life. They allowed me to study what I wanted, to spend years on philosophy books, to get here! Philosophy has given me some of the greatest satisfactions in my life. It is what I want to do, what I love to read.
What are your future plans for after you finish your dissertation? Do you want to stay in academia?
I would like to stay connected to philosophy, creativity, knowledge. Academia is a good option for me, especially research. I also want to continue writing literature and editing works (I am a book editor). It would be nice to get involved in new publishing projects yet to be discovered.
What are some big questions in philosophy that interest you?
From Ancient Greece to the present, philosophy has depended on foundations or gods (literal or metaphorical). Over the last few centuries, we have been harshly questioning these foundations and killing our gods. Today, with artificial intelligence and new technologies applied to biology, we are playing at being creators instead of creatures. This had been done in art, but now it is factual. It is a new game that breaks with more than two thousand years of metaphysics. What is next? I am very curious to discover this future step because it is a challenge for the history of philosophy.
Another issue that concerns me is the past, the difference between memory and history. I think that time, from a philosophical-historical point of view, is crucial to understanding the world and understanding ourselves. In that philosophical-historical time, there is an important element of remembering, forgetting, transgression, attempts at clarification, lost and recovered identity. All of this is fascinating to me, like a great mystery to be solved!
I am also very interested in the relationship between language and the world, language and knowledge. Today’s world is very quantitative, very scientific. The language of the academic world is technical, impersonal, artificial, essentially dogmatic. The knowledge it produces will have the same adjectives, but it would be unambitious to believe it’s the only knowledge. Is another language possible? It’s not a poetic or mystical question (that’s part of the past), it is a question directed toward the future… toward a new way of feeling and thinking.
.flex_column.av-27oawcf-6995295906254ad6afc2e643f96ee0d6{
border-radius:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding:25px 25px 25px 25px;
}
#top .av-special-heading.av-ek8k0ov-48592ae056fc465d8f121a452feb6047{
margin:0px 0px 0px 0px;
padding-bottom:0;
}
body .av-special-heading.av-ek8k0ov-48592ae056fc465d8f121a452feb6047 .av-special-heading-tag .heading-char{
font-size:25px;
}
.av-special-heading.av-ek8k0ov-48592ae056fc465d8f121a452feb6047 .av-subheading{
font-size:15px;
}
About the person
Alba Ramírez Guijarro studied philosophy at the Universidad Pontificia Comillas in Spain, where she earned her Bachelor’s degree. Internships took her to the USA, and she spent a semester abroad at the Università degli Studi di Torino in Italy. She completed her Master’s degree at the University of Salzburg. She then came to the Department of Philosophy at the University of Klagenfurt to pursue her doctoral studies under the internationally renowned Wittgenstein expert Volker Munz. Her second supervisor and mentor in the Young Scientists Mentoring Programme is Alois Berger from the University of Bergen. Her doctoral studies are supported by a scholarship from the Ramón Areces Foundation (Spain).
Der Beitrag Ludwig Wittgenstein and Artificial Intelligence erschien zuerst auf University of Klagenfurt.