Katherine Elkins is Professor of Humanities and faculty in Computing at Kenyon College, where she teaches in the Integrated Program in Humane Studies. She writes about the age-old conversation between philosophy and literature as well as the more recent conversation about AI, language and art. Recent books include The Shapes of Stories with Cambridge University Press, which explores the emotional arc underlying narrative. In addition to articles on authors ranging from Plato and Sappho to Woolf and Kafka, her latest research explores AI ethics and explainability in Large Language Models like GPT4. She consults on AI regulation and fairness, and can also be heard talking about new developments in AI on podcasts like Radio AI and streaming networks like Al Jazeera.
Katherine Elkins
Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature
Director of The Integrated Program in Humane Studies
Founding Co-Director KDH Lab
Kenyon College
Papers / Presentations:
The Shape of Stories (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
Proust’s In Search of Lost Time: Philosophical Perspectives (Oxford Academic, 2022)
Can GPT-3 Pass a Writer’s Turing Test? (Journal of Cultural Analytics, 2020)
Participant In:
October 15-16, 2022
Coding and the New Human Phenotype
From the level of DNA to that of phenotype, life may be viewed as an articulation of code. Within such a model, phenotypes are a kind of abstraction of the DNA code. Starting with the genome, the DNA winds its way through RNA, proteins, and cellular process outward into the world beyond, and in the... read more! »
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October 15-16, 2022
Coding and the New Human Phenotype
From the level of DNA to that of phenotype, life may be viewed as an articulation of code. Within such a model, phenotypes are a kind of abstraction of the DNA code. Starting with the genome, the DNA winds its way through RNA, proteins, and cellular process outward into the world beyond, and in the... read more! »October 16, 2022 at 11:00am EST
Coding and the new Human Phenotype: Are Natural Language Generators for Real?
The program GPT-3 can create language that gives the impression that it is thinking. What will our interaction with robots of greater and greater verbal agility mean in the near future? What sort of Other will these robots become, evolve to? Is awareness of a code incompatible with any form of realism, and what does... read more! »
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October 16, 2022 at 11:00am EST
Coding and the new Human Phenotype: Are Natural Language Generators for Real?
The program GPT-3 can create language that gives the impression that it is thinking. What will our interaction with robots of greater and greater verbal agility mean in the near future? What sort of Other will these robots become, evolve to? Is awareness of a code incompatible with any form of realism, and what does... read more! »November 19th, 2022 at 2:30pm EST
Living in Difficult Times
Daily headlines have been startling and scary: “U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged in 2020, Especially for Black and Hispanic Americans,” reported The New York Times. “The Pandemic has Made Homelessness More Visible in Many American Cities,” noted The Economist, while The Guardian announced “The Latest UN Report is Clear: Climate Change is Here, It’s a Crisis, and It’s Caused by... read more! »
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November 19th, 2022 at 2:30pm EST
Living in Difficult Times
Daily headlines have been startling and scary: “U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged in 2020, Especially for Black and Hispanic Americans,” reported The New York Times. “The Pandemic has Made Homelessness More Visible in Many American Cities,” noted The Economist, while The Guardian announced “The Latest UN Report is Clear: Climate Change is Here, It’s a Crisis, and It’s Caused by... read more! »September 23rd, 2023 at 2:30pm EST
Emotion
What is human life without emotion? Could the “dawn of humankind” even be imagined without emotion exerting its effects right there from the start? And across the millennia emotion has forever been at the heart of most matters. Human history has been shaped by emotion and reshaped by attitudes toward emotion; a powerful human force... read more! »
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September 23rd, 2023 at 2:30pm EST