Can generative artificial intelligence (AI) breathe new life into the philosophical inquiry of consciousness?
On Friday, August 18, 2023, we held a special Coffee Hour, during which Maria Falikman and Larry Todd Wilson discussed an innovative AI-assisted Neurophilosophy class experience, where students and educators leveraged the power of machine learning to delve into the profound questions of mind, cognition, and the potential for machine consciousness. To guide learning and to scaffold learning strategies, we used different kinds of prompts the students addressed to Large Language Models (ChatGPT or Google Bard). The prompts involved a variety of perspectives on the topic (psychological, philosophical, neurobiological, evolutionary, and technological) and suggested a variety of outputs (summaries, tables, graphs) to personalize learning. During the Coffee Hour, Maria and Larry share information about our experiences and lessons from this AI-augmented class.
Their presentation was intended to illustrate productive uses of AI chatbots that can be implemented for a wide variety of course content so that you can put the information to use in your classes during the upcoming academic year if you wish.
Here you can access the slides from the presentation and more information on the example from an undergraduate course on neurophilosophy taught by Maria last academic year with support from Larry, who is a management sciences engineer with a background in the use of AI Chatbots.