Attention mechanism in AI systems and its relevance for textual pragmatics
Sun, 8 Dec 2024, 15:00 UTC
Prof. Kristian Bankov, New Bulgarian University
The discovery of the attention mechanism in deep learning algorithms became for many a turning point for the opening of AI to the general public and therefore a major prerequisite for the extraordinary boom of this technology in the last two or three years. The mechanism of attention allows AI systems to look beyond the simple semantics of the words we use to make our queries and capture its virtual context, thus creating the undeniable impression that they understand what we really mean.
In the first part of the presentation, I will recall several classical views of how writing and textuality provide a new structure to the human world relative to that of oral culture and ostensive communication. Textually fixed cultural information requires a level of universalization of utterance that ensures the absence of the communicator and his or her nonverbal and contextual support for the message. This characteristic of written language is proving to be one of the great challenges to the understanding between us and AI today. In a sense, AI has shown us that there is no salvation within the text.
In the second part I will give, to the best of my ability and competence, a brief explanation of the attention mechanism in deep learning algorithms and what are its main characteristics that make it semiotically relevant. Here I will come to the aid of some very insightful definitions that Umberto Eco made back in the 1970s in his attempts to explain the “format of the semantic space”. Eco uses literary similes and metaphors to describe the very thing that only 50 years later became possible thanks to vectors.
In conclusion, I will try to outline several lines of “virtual” collaboration between textual pragmatics and the new standards of textual production for which the author is not only dead, but was not even born, being a computer program.
Kristian Bankov (born 1970) has been a professor of semiotics at the New Bulgarian University since 2011 and the director of the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies since 2007. He led the organizing team of the 12th World Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (2014). His interest in semiotics dates back to the early 1990s when, as a student in Bologna, he attended courses by Prof. Ugo Volli and Prof. Umberto Eco. Bankov graduated in 1995 and has been teaching semiotics at NBU since then. In 2000, he defended his Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki under the supervision of Prof. Eero Tarasti. In March 2006, he was awarded the academic title “Associate Professor of Contemporary Philosophical Doctrines (Semiotics),” and in 2011, he became a “Professor of Semiotics.” In 2023, he was awarded a Doctor of Science degree. Prof. Bankov served as the Secretary General of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (IASS/AIS) from 2014 to 2024. He served as Vice-Rector for the international affairs and public relations of the NBU from 2011 to 2012.
Prof. Bankov’s initial scholarly interests were in the area of continental philosophy of language, Bergson’s philosophy, and existential semiotics. He later shifted his research focus to sociosemiotics and issues of identity. Since 2005, he has been exploring the consumer culture, and in the past decade, his interest has turned to new media, digital culture, and recently to artificial intelligence.
Kristian Bankov is the author of five books and numerous articles in Bulgarian, English, and Italian. He is also active internationally, serving as the chief organizer of the annual International Early Fall School in Semiotics (EFSS) since 2006 and as the representative of the Balkans on the executive board of IASS/AIS since 2007.
Moderator:
Monica Rector (Rio de Janeiro)
Panel:
Tiziana Migliore (Urbino)
Konstantinos Michos (Thessaloniki)
Roman Esqueda (Mexico)
Paul Bouissac (Toronto)
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