The Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB) announces the publication of two new volumes, co-edited by Alin Olteanu, visiting professor at ICUB.
The volume “Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence: Optimistic and Pessimistic Views” (Springer, 2025), edited by Markus Pantsar, Frederik Stjernfelt, Gabriele Gramelsberger and Alin Olteanu, discusses new trends in AI, given a so-called golden period that this field is undergoing.
Recent progress in machine learning applications, such as image recognition and natural language processing, have raised the level of optimism that one day an AI can exhibit genuine intelligence. In games like Go and chess, human players have been surpassed by computers. As during earlier periods of AI optimism, there is increasing talk about domain-general artificial intelligence being possible. But just how intelligent are current AI systems, and what can we expect in the future? What will a world with an increasingly important role for AI systems be like? Which shifts with regard to the concept of intelligence as well as the societal order do these developments have? Authors with different views on the present and future of AI research and the role of AI in society discuss these questions, illustrating the diversity of discussions on AI and the many ways our lives are influenced by it.
The book stems from academic dialogue carried out at the Käte Hamburger Kolleg “Cultures of Research”, an International Center for Advanced Studies in Philosophy, Sociology and History of Science and Technology at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. During the first academic year of the center, 2021-22, Markus Pantsar and Frederik Stjernfelt – both senior fellows at the center – organised a weekly lecture series with international speakers. These lectures kindled quite a few debates in the early stages of this Center’s existence, thus becoming one of its developmental pathways. Consequently, professors Gabriele Gramelsberger and Stefan Böschen, the directors of the Center, decided to expand the theme and commission contributions from top researchers for an edited volume. Some of the articles are written by the lecture series speakers, some are by fellows at the “Cultures of Research” Center, while others come from invited contributors around the globe.
More information about the book can be found on the Springer website, here.
On the other hand, the volume “艺术产业符号学 在技术、政治与感知之间. [Semiotics of industrial art: Between technology, politics and senses]” (Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, 2025), edited by Jia Peng, Alin Olteanu, Jorge Eduardo Urueña López, discusses, under semiotic angles, a plethora of matters on aesthetics in industrial societies, considering areas such as contemporary art, the hybridity of tradition/modernity, corporeality, and new media art. It contributes to the debate on how semiotics can address current social, political and cultural challenges.
The book is a part of large publication project by Editorial Pontificia Universidad Javeriana with the International Association of Semiotic Studies, aiming to explore the emergent interests in academic semiotics and to make scholarship available in a variety of languages. Five volumes have been published under this project, which can be found here.
Alin Olteanu is Associate Professor at the Institute of Language Sciences of Shanghai International Studies University. He is a leading scholar in the semiotic approaches to education and literacies.
In the present, he is visiting professor at the Social Sciences Section of the Research Institute of the University of Bucharest (ICUB).
His visiting project at ICUB, “Putting imagination back in imaginary: a cognitive and sociotechnical theory of affordances” stems from Alin’s interest in how ongoing digitalization is extending cognition, pluralizing social representation modalities and thus producing new social imaginaries. This is a theoretical effort to bridge cognitive and social sciences by reflecting on the relation between the imagination, as a cognitive capacity to virtually entertain possible worlds, and imaginaries, as social constructions afforded through technical infrastructures. To pursue this, Alin is interested in creating a hub for the study of technological futures at ICUB.
Postări asemănătoare:
Alin Olteanu, visiting professor at ICUB, co-editor of a volume on the semiotics of education dedicated to Andrew Stables, published by the prestigious Springer publishing house
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