A Symbolic Systems Distinguished Speaker Event - Ted Chiang on Magic vs. Imaginary Science
What is the difference between magic and imaginary science in fiction? How can they shed light on the way we understand the real world?
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What is the difference between magic and imaginary science in fiction? How can they shed light on the way we understand the real world?
The AI Index, currently in its ninth year, tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data relating to artificial intelligence.

The AI Index, currently in its ninth year, tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data relating to artificial intelligence.
Music is intertwined with human emotion, memory, and identity, making it a powerful medium for affective experience and regulation.

Music is intertwined with human emotion, memory, and identity, making it a powerful medium for affective experience and regulation.
The possibility that AI will automate most cognitive labor is worth taking seriously. How should we adapt to this transformation? I start from the perspective, articulated in the essay “AI as normal technology”, that the true bottlenecks lie downstream of capabilities and that AI’s impacts will unfold gradually over decades. If this is true, there are major gaps in our current evidence infrastructure, because it over-emphasizes the capability layer.
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The possibility that AI will automate most cognitive labor is worth taking seriously. How should we adapt to this transformation? I start from the perspective, articulated in the essay “AI as normal technology”, that the true bottlenecks lie downstream of capabilities and that AI’s impacts will unfold gradually over decades. If this is true, there are major gaps in our current evidence infrastructure, because it over-emphasizes the capability layer.
Join us as we hear from Ted Chiang, American speculative fiction writer and author of Exhalation and “Story of Your Life,” the short story that was the basis of the 2016 film Arrival. Chiang's work has received four Nebula awards, four Hugo awards, the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and four Locus awards.
Presented by the Symbolic Systems Program. Co-sponsored by the English Department, Symbolic Systems Society, and Creative Writing Program.