Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: In Conversation: An OUP Podcast
Episode: Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever, "Making AI Intelligible: Philosophical Foundations" (Oxford UP, 2021)
Description: In their open-access publication, Making AI Intelligible: Philosophical Foundations (Oxford University Press, 2021), Herman Cappelen and Josh Dever argue that philosophers of language can contribute to a deeper understanding of artificial intelligence. AIs known as “neural nets” are becoming commonplace and we increasingly rely on their outputs for action-guidance, as when an AI like Siri hears your question and says, “There’s a pizza shop on the corner.” Our use of words like “says” suggests an important question: do AIs literally say anything? Should we understand their outputs as utterances with meaningful content? And if so, what makes that content meaningful, and how is it re...