As part of the lecture series for newly appointed colleagues at the Institute of Social Sciences, Petra Vidaković Cvetković will deliver a lecture entitled “Social Cognition and the Possibility of Personal Identity in AI Agents”, primarily focused on the application of specific models of social cognition to artificial agents based on deep neural networks.
The starting assumption of the lecture is that the modeling and implementation of capacities for social cognition have significant implications for the status of personhood in artificial intelligence.
In the introductory part of the lecture, the conceptual framework of social cognition advocated by Cameron Buckner will be presented and analyzed, with particular attention to the relationship between deep learning, rational reasoning, and social interaction. The subsequent section will examine the complementary perspective of Anna Strasser, whose minimalist approach to social cognition enables a theoretical integration with Buckner’s position.
On the basis of this integration, the lecture will address the possibility of attributing personhood to artificial agents that possess minimal forms of social cognition, thereby opening space for further research on personal identity in the context of contemporary artificial intelligence.
Petra Vidaković Cvetković is a junior research fellow at the Center for Philosophy of the Institute of Social Sciences.