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I’m Auli Viidalepp, a last year PhD student at the University of Tartu, Estonia. My background is in semiotics and my thesis focuses on the cultural representations and beliefs about technology, specifically the concept of artificial intelligence. I have written articles about robots in science fiction, GPT-3 and its public reception, and the semiotic functioning of synthetic media. The wider goal of my work is to reveal how knowledge is socially constructed and how discoourses borrow meanings from any available cultural ‘repositories’ for a novel or complex idea (such as AI or technology in general). These repositories include myths, (science) fiction, folklore, and animistic beliefs in almost every kind of discourse, including the scientific ones.
In 2023, I founded a research network called Technosemiotics where we hosted regular a seminar What technosemiotics can do?, discussing various topics at the intersection of technology, society and semiotics.
Automation Bias and the Anthropomorphic Connotations of Artificial Intelligence. Online talk at FACETS Advanced Seminar in Philosophy of Communication “On Filters and Philters,” Università di Torino. 23 Feb 2023.
“Machine semiosis” and the quasi-signs with Tyler J. Bennett, Gatherings in Biosemiotics, Olomouc, 1 Jul 2022.
Science, fiction, folklore: mythologizing machine learning. Semiosalong: Mythokatalysis I. 17 Oct 2021.
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