职位信息
PhD Position in AI and Meaning-Making
11月20日截止
This project aims to build upon alternative approaches that emphasize the relational, processual, and reflexive nature of meaning. For example, ethnomethodology is a heterodox sociological approach that conceptualizes meaning as emerging from the concrete, ongoing, empirical context of social interaction.
It positions itself as the study of “ethnomethods”—the practices people employ to make sense of and make sense to one another. While ethnomethodology has been highly influential in the field of Human-Machine Interaction, the advent of LLMs opens up radically new avenues for exploring the “barrier of meaning” between humans and machines, and for reflecting on how humans and machines make (and don’t make) sense of, to, and with each other.
This PhD project seeks to explore the issue of meaning(-making) in relation to AI from perspectives that emphasize its relational, processual, and reflexive nature—drawing inspiration from ethnomethodology, but also open to other approaches such as socio-semiotics and systems theory.
The project combines theoretical development with empirical investigation of encounters between humans and LLMs, or other instances of conversational/social AI. The overarching goal is to contribute to the respecification of the debate on the boundaries between the human and the artificial, grounded in theoretical reflexivity and methodological rigor.
Candidates can develop studies of their own choosing within the broader scope of the project. We welcome research ideas that combine ambitious theoretical development with empirical research; the latter based on a number of methods including observational studies, conversation analysis, (quasi-)experiments, or computational methods. We invite interested candidates to prepare short proposals (details below) inspired by, but not limited to, the following themes:
humans making sense of/to/with AI;
AI making sense of/to/with humans;
AI and nonesense/absurdism/ambiguity;
misunderstandings between humans and AI;
taken-for-granted/common sense knowledge of AI;
reflexivity and indexicality in AI;
machine-machine
interaction;situatedness of AI development and/or adoption;
in/commensurability between human and artificial meaning-making
Candidates need to have the following qualifications:
a completed Master's degree in social sciences, linguistics, communication science, media studies, artificial intelligence or a related discipline;
excellent research skills demonstrated by an outstanding Master's thesis and a demonstrable capacity to develop a track record of publishing in high-ranking journals and/or with leading presses;
a demonstrable interest in inter/trans-disciplinary research at the intersection of technology, culture and society;
familiarity with ethnomethodology or affine relational perspectives on meaning-making (e.g., systems theory, socio-semiotics, science and technology es);
solid methodological skills in any of the proposed methods, especially conversation analysis;
a strong cooperative attitude and willingness to engage in collaborative research;
enthusiasm for communicating academic research to non-academic audiences;
a professional command of English and good presentation skills.
submission of a PhD thesis within the period of appointment;
publishing single-authored and co-authored peer reviewed articles;
presenting intermediate research results at workshops and conferences;
organising knowledge dissemination activities;
participation in the Research School and Faculty of Humanities PhD training programmes.
https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/PhD-Position-in-AI-and-Meaning-Making/804894302/
