Public evening lecture by Professor Dr. Noah Bubenhofer (University of Zurich, German Department)

We already have several decades of experience with the digital age. Nevertheless, it seems that with the rise of artificial intelligence since the end of 2022, some things are getting really mixed up: The "stochastic parrot" (Bender et al. 2021) can simulate human communication very well and even seems to be able to make decisions: About the continuation of a dialog, the quality of a text, the correctness of an exam answer, the application dossier, the appropriate speech, etc. This calls traditional concepts into question: authorship, responsibility or interaction. In my talk, I would like to give a linguistic perspective on language and communication in the digital age and show why - linguistically speaking - text-generating AI works so well in the first place. At the same time, however, I will ask why these concepts are being called into question and whether this is actually a new phenomenon. The lecture will also outline the idea that the broad discussion surrounding AI could also be an opportunity to take a reflective look at language and communication in the digital society.

Noah Bubenhofer has been Professor of Linguistics at the German Department of the University of Zurich since 2019. He previously worked at the University of Heidelberg, the Leibniz Institute for the German Language in Mannheim, TU Dresden and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences. He studied at the Universities of Basel and Freiburg and completed his doctorate at the University of Zurich. His research interests include socio- and cultural linguistics, corpus linguistics, pragmatics and language and communication in the digital society.

Moderation: Professor Dr. Konstanze Marx-Wischnowski