Insight sessions by Carl Miller and Maarten Reesink

The War over Attention and AI – Carl Miller

I'm going to talk about how geopolitics is colliding with AI.  I'll present new research we've conducted that shows a covert Russian operation to manipulate the responses LLMs make. We'll go into how it happens, the extent to which it succeeds, and how it points to the emergence of AI as a new battlefield in information warfare. 

Are you tokking to me? – Maarten Resink

From Aristotle through the Church Fathers to Descartes, the prevailing view was always that animals are ‘dumb’ and that only humans can think and speak; the study of animals fell within the natural sciences. Until recently – for in the last few decades, the humanities and social sciences have begun to recognise animals as a blind spot in their respective fields. Meanwhile, a wide range of research from the new, interdisciplinary field known as Human-Animal Studies shows that many animals, too, possess rich forms of language and culture. In this presentation, we will look at recent insights into what animals have to say to one another and to us humans – and how, slowly but surely, we are learning to live alongside them in our diverse and therefore multicultural society...