LLM Forum: A Conversation with Wai Chee Dimock

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Recent breakthroughs in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have produced a new class of neural networks called Large Language Models (LLMs) that demonstrate a remarkable capability to generate fluent, plausible responses to prompts posed in natural language. While LLMs have already revolutionized certain industry applications, the recent debut of ChatGPT has generated new anxiety and curiosity about machine intelligence, especially in the way we teach, research, tell stories and report facts.

The Princeton LLM Forum is bringing together leading scholars and researchers from a variety of disciplines and fields to discuss the implications that large language models (LLMs) have on our understanding of language, society, culture, and theory of mind. Join us for our second panel, a discussion between Wai Chee Dimock, William Lampson Professor Emeritus of American Studies and English at Yale University and research affiliate at the Harvard University Center for the Environment, and CDH Faculty Director Meredith Martin, associate professor of English.

Wai Chee Dimock writes about public health, climate change, and indigenous communities, focusing on the symbiotic relation between human and nonhuman intelligence. She is now at Harvard’s Center for the Environment, working on a new book, “AI, Microbes, and Us: Risky Partners in an Age of Pandemics and Climate Change.” A collaborative project, “AI for Climate Resilience,” is co-sponsored by Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and Yale’s Jackson School of Global Affairs. Dimock’s most recent book is Weak Planet (2020). Other books include Through Other Continents: American Literature Across Deep Time (2006); Shades of the Planet (2007); and a team-edited anthology, American Literature in the World: Anne Bradstreet to Octavia Butler ( 2017). Her 1996 book, Residues of Justice: Literature, Law, Philosophy, was reissued in a new edition in 2021. Her essays have appeared in Artforum, Chronicle of Higher Education, The Hill, Los Angeles Review of Books, New York Times, New Yorker, and Scientific American.