Yoav Shoham | Understanding Understanding

The question of whether machines can really understand is as old as computing. Lovelace and Searle thought not. Turing thought yes. (Ok that’s not totally accurate, but let’s not ruin a good story.) With the advent of LLMs the question has resurfaced in force, again with some strong skeptics such as Bender et al. I’ll share my views, based mostly on our work at AI21 Labs. Spoilers: (1) I’m with Turing, I think yes. (2) LLMs, as currently built, are necessary but not sufficient. (3) The question is more interesting than the answer.

In-person registration is open to the Stanford community. If you are not a Stanford affiliate and you would like to request an in-person seat, please contact the HAI Events Team at stanford-hai@stanford.edu. 

In-Person Registration

Virtual Registration

Ask the speaker a question

If you need a disability-related accommodation, please contact: Madeleine Wright, Communications and Events Coordinator, at phone: (650)996-7751 or email: mwright7@stanford.edu. Requests should be made at least a week before the event. 

View the Campus Access Guide for the Gates Computer Science Building