What are conversational AI systems? What, if anything, do they really ‘understand’? What kinds of human values and perspectives do they encode? How will humans relate to them?

This session will provide a brief history of the recent wave of large language models, illuminate some of their intriguing capabilities, and provide a broad overview of the social and ethical questions that they raise as they become part of mainstream human-computer interaction. Drawing upon her extensive experience working at the intersection of ethics, cognitive science, and AI, Winnie will provide a critical insight into how we might critically evaluate the role of conversational AIs in our lives.

Key learnings from this session:

• A deeper understanding of how conversational AI systems work
• A range of applications conversational AIs are useful for
• A set of key themes concerning the ethics of conversational AI systems