Photo: L. Sambourne's satiric portrait of Darwin published in Punch, 1881.

Info about event

Time

Monday 8 June 2026, at 11:00 - 12:00

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Location

AIAS, building 1630, room 301

Photo: Joseph Dumit, AIAS Visiting Fellow from University of California Davis, USA

By AIAS

Abstract

Large Language Model (LLM) products are increasingly used to as part of research, even naming one of their features "deep research". Searching for journal articles and facts on the web, they engage in structured practices of interpretation, curation, interpretation, curation and interpretation. This talk discusses the many paths through which generative text processes (LLMs) are divergent, resulting in different models, different prompts, or the same model-prompt generating importantly different answers. This is critically important for medical questions, and anything with uncertainty or indeterminacy as part of its foundation (business, science, politics, environment, war). Summaries are not neutral, especially with regard to how they treat uncertainty, especially when iterative prompt responses drift among demands. Perhaps we take seriously LLMs as provocative spectres rather than letting our scholarship be abducted by unthinking aliens.

Short Bio

Joseph Dumit is an American anthropologist of passions and performance, brains and games, AI and computers, contact improvisation and slownesses, drugs and facts. He is Chair of Performance Studies, and Professor of Science & Technology Studies, and Anthropology at University of California Davis; and Professor in Interdisciplinary Data Collaborations at Aarhus University. His books include Picturing Personhood: Brain Scans & Biomedical America and Drugs for Life: How Pharmaceutical Companies Define Our Health. Recently, he has turned to large language models (LLMs), experimenting with them as collaborators in creativity, perspective-taking and critical reflection rather than simply tools for answers. He likes lichen and speculation.

What is an AIAS Seminar?

The AIAS Seminar Series is a session of seminars held by the AIAS fellows, AIAS Visiting or Tandem Fellows or by other speakers proposed by the fellows. In each seminar, a fellow will present and discuss her/his current research and work-in-progress to an interdisciplinary audience for 30 minutes, closing off with 30 minutes for questions, comments and discussion.