[Air-L] PhD position in ‘AI and Meaning-Making’ (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam)

[Stefania Milan]

posting for my awesome colleague Davide Beraldo: we are hiring!

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Dear all,

I would like to bring your attention to an open PhD position on 'AI and 
Meaning-Making' at the Institute for Logic, Language and Computation 
(ILLC), University of Amsterdam. YOu would be based at the awesome 
Department of Media Studies. The application deadline is*20 November*.

For more information, please checkhere 
<https://vacatures.uva.nl/UvA/job/PhD-Position-in-AI-and-Meaning-Making/804894302/>or 
see the extract below.

Best,
Davide Beraldo (Media Studies, University of Amsterdam)

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*PhD position in ‘AI and Meaning-Making’*

This PhD project seeks to explore the issue of meaning(-making) in 
relation to AI from perspectives that emphasize its relational, 
processual, and reflexive nature—drawing inspiration from 
ethnomethodology, but also open to other approaches such as 
socio-semiotics and systems theory. The project combines theoretical 
development with empirical investigation of encounters between humans 
and LLMs, or other instances of conversational/social AI. The 
overarching goal is to contribute to the respecification of the debate 
on the boundaries between the human and the artificial, grounded in 
theoretical reflexivity and methodological rigor.

Candidates can develop studies of their own choosing within the broader 
scope of the project. We welcome research ideas that combine ambitious 
theoretical development with empirical research; the latter based on a 
number of methods including observational studies, conversation 
analysis, (quasi-)experiments, or computational methods. We invite 
interested candidates to prepare short proposals (details below) 
inspired by, but not limited to, the following themes:
     •     humans making sense of/to/with AI;
     •     AI making sense of/to/with humans;
     •     AI and nonsense/absurdism/ambiguity;
     •     misunderstandings between humans and AI;
     •     taken-for-granted/common sense knowledge of AI;
     •     reflexivity and indexicality in AI;
     •     machine-machine interaction;
     •     situatedness of AI development and/or adoption;
     •     in/commensurability between human and artificial meaning-making