A Symposium on Communication & Intelligence

This symposium is a place to discuss how to think about the intertwining of Communication and Intelligence in an age of machines that talk back. We increasingly interact with technology that attempts (simulates?) communication with humans, rather than just signaling information passively for a user to interpret. While the term “AI” has been around since the 50’s, the explosion of products, services, and bots that create a complex dialogue with their users (and even among themselves!) has created a phase shift in how we interact with machines that wield language. How should we study AI that communicates, rather than just solves a well-defined problem on its own? What are the structures of the new communication networks AI helps create, spanning people, machines, and institutions? What “counts” as communication and can AI help us decompose how it works more clearly? Can machines that communicate help us communicate better? Or are they merely eroding and biasing our human communication by polluting the commons? In this symposium we will discuss how communication and intelligence interact—in humans, in machines, and between them.