Coding and the New Human Phenotype October 15-16, 2022 Past Event From the level of DNA to that of phenotype, life may be viewed as an articulation of code. Within such a model, phenotypes are a kind of abstraction of the DNA code. Starting with the genome, the DNA winds its way through RNA, proteins, and cellular process outward into the world beyond, and in the process it expresses an abstracted projection of itself onto the “plane” of the phenotype situated in its niche. There is one phenotype, our own, that has evolved to where it can design its own generative code. Among the many codes creating our human world is the digital, the binary lingua franca of software engineers. Written at one level as a linear script of ones and zeroes, and then expressed as other media and phenomena, coding underwrites the videos we engage with, the online menus from which we order, the diagnoses radiologists make, the security we crave, and the bombs we drop. Code serves to translate phenomena into a language distinct from the phenomena themselves: atoms, proteins, facial expressions, and the songs we love become symbols, numbers, or other grammars. This conversion is useful; it provides a way to communicate, utilize, predict, understand, and simulate phenomena. Scientific progress is impossible without a positivist kind of code, whereby a model of the world is generated through encoding phenomena into facts, mechanisms, systems, and laws that cohere logically. How do we understand an atom, for example without the scientific language encoding it? The language of the Anthropocene is code. It is coding that mints and maintains cryptocurrency and it is the language of the lightspeed communication driving financial transactions occurring every millisecond of every day. We speak to one another through encoded devices; we learn and work through screens that reconstitute our bodies and voices through the transmission of code. We play video games that are sophisticated assemblages of code, and we interact with folks online using coded exchanges. An entire meta-world is being constructed from code alone. As code comes to mediate so much of our lived experience, we face some important questions: how is our immersion in the encoded world affecting our lives? Might something vital, something unencoded or unencodable, get lost in translation? Like all abstractions, code will leave information out. Even the most sophisticated bit of code is invariably inadequate to capture the rich complexity of embodied, unmediated engagement. And what are we to make of miscommunication, misinformation, and deception by design? Code, after all, is also the language of espionage, deception, and surveillance. This conference intends to examine the various ways the digitalization of life and the growing metaverse may be separating us from an original, direct, and less abstracted form of life. What might the benefits be? And what are the costs and dangers? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Saturday 10/15: In Search of Lost Time 10:00AM – 12:00AM How we discover codes, bearers of meaning, and how we reconstruct that meaning in archeology & paleoanthropology, in psychoanalysis, and in neuroscience research on memory. Manipulated Perception? Fakery, Authenticity, and the Birth of NFTs 1:30PM – 3:30PM What counts as true and how we might know the truth in the age of coding. A discussion about misinformation, the decentralization of knowledge, and the struggle to establish what is real. Encoded algorithms help to provide security but also risk an encroachment on privacy. The ability to create convincing but misleading perceptions, to create false narratives and false worlds, has great potential for abuse. Coding, Fiction, Metafiction – the Parcellation of What Isn’t There 4:00PM – 6:00PM The humanities deal with the manipulation of ideas. Ideas can be encoded, metabolized, and contribute to cultural evolution. What roles do cultural memes – be they fact, factoid, or fiction – play in what goes on. Does fiction provide any insight into this complex dynamic? +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Sunday 10/16: Are Natural Language Generators for Real? 11:00AM – 1:00PM The program GPT-3 can create language that gives the impression that it is thinking. What will our interaction with robots of greater and greater verbal agility mean in the near future? What sort of Other will these robots become, evolve to? Is awareness of a code incompatible with any form of realism, and what does this mean for epistemology and ethics? Is the Universe a Metaverse 2:00PM – 4:00PM Our panel will discuss the suggestion that we have been living in a sort of metaverse all along. This claim starts with the notion that the Universe evolves as one giant algorithmic computation, and that information is the basic substance. A variation on this line of thought asks the question: could we be living in a simulation à la the Matrix. Participants: Emily Adlam Postdoctoral Associate, Rotman Institute for Philosophy of Science, University of Western Ontario View Papers / Presentations » Emily Adlam is a postdoctoral associate at the Rotman Institute for Philosophy of Science at the University of Western Ontario. She recevied her PhD in relativistic quantum information from the University of Cambridge. Prior to that she completed the Perimeter Scholar’s International programme in theoretical physics, and she did her undergraduate degree in physics and… read more » Ned Block Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science, New York University Ned Block (Ph.D., Harvard), Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science, came to NYU in 1996 from MIT where he was Chair of the Philosophy Program. He works in philosophy of mind and foundations of neuroscience and cognitive science, and is currently writing a book on attention. He is a Fellow of the American… read more » György Buzsáki Biggs Professor of Neuroscience, New York University View Papers / Presentations » György Buzsáki identified a hierarchical organization of brain oscillations and proposed how these rhythms support a ‘brain syntax’, a physiological basis of cognitive operations. His work changed how we think about information encoding in the healthy and diseased brain, such as epilepsy and psychiatric diseases. His most influential work is known as the two-stage model… read more » David Chalmers Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science, New York University Co-Director, Center for Mind, Brain, & Consciousness, New York University View Papers / Presentations » David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind (1996), Constructing the World (2010), and _Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy (2022). He co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study… read more » Kyunghyun Cho Associate Professor, Computer Science & Data Science, New York University CIFAR Fellow, Learning in Machines & Brains Kyunghyun Cho is an associate professor of computer science and data science at New York University and CIFAR Fellow of Learning in Machines & Brains. He is also a senior director of frontier research at the Prescient Design team within Genentech Research & Early Development (gRED). He was a research scientist at Facebook AI Research… read more » Elias Dakwar Associate Professor, Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University Elias Dakwar, MD is an Associate Professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a board-certified addiction and general psychiatrist. He has been researching novel treatments for addictions for over a decade, with the support of several grants from the National Institutes of Health. A special focus of his research has been evaluating… read more » Laura Edelson Postdoctoral Researcher, New York University Laura Edelson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at New York University with the Cybersecurity for Democracy project, which she co-directs with Damon McCoy. There, she leads the Ad Observatory and Ad Observer projects, which aim to increase public transparency of digital advertising, particularly during elections. Her research focuses on studying the spread of misinformation and other… read more » Katherine Elkins Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature Director of The Integrated Program in Humane Studies Founding Co-Director KDH Lab Kenyon College View Papers / Presentations » Katherine Elkins is Professor of Humanities and faculty in Computing at Kenyon College, where she teaches in the Integrated Program in Humane Studies. She writes about the age-old conversation between philosophy and literature as well as the more recent conversation about AI, language and art. Recent books include The Shapes of Stories with Cambridge University Press, which… read more » Christopher Fuchs Professor, Physics, College of Science & Mathematics at UMass Boston Christopher Fuchs is a Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts Boston who specializes in quantum information theory and quantum foundations. He is an author or co-author of over 160 scholarly pieces, one of which, “Unconditional Quantum Teleportation” with H. J. Kimble’s experimental group, was voted a “Top-Ten Breakthrough of 1998” by the editors of Science. He is a… read more » Sylvester James Gates Clark Leadership Chair in Science, Distinguished University Professor & Regents Professor, University of Maryland Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr. is a theoretical physicist. He is a University of Maryland University System Regents Professor, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, and a College Park Professor Emeritus. He currently holds the Clark Leadership Chair in Science and serves as a Professor of Physics with the Physics Department as well as… read more » Noah Giansiracusa Assistant Professor, Mathematics & Data Science, Bentley University View Papers / Presentations » Noah Giansiracusa (PhD in math from Brown University) is an assistant professor of mathematics and data science at Bentley University. Noah’s research interests include algebraic geometry (the abstract study of systems of polynomial equations and their solutions), machine learning (especially topological and geometric data analysis), artificial intelligence, empirical legal studies, phylogenetics, and misinformation. Noah is… read more » Peter A. Gloor Research Scientist, Center for Collective Intelligence, MIT's Sloan School of Management View Papers / Presentations » Peter A. Gloor is a Research Scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he leads a twenty-year project exploring Collaborative Innovation Networks. He is also Founder and Chief Creative Officer of software company galaxyadvisors, and Honorary Professor at University of Cologne, and at Jilin University, Changchun, China. He… read more » Andrew Guess Assistant Professor, Politics & Public Affairs, Princeton University Andy Guess is an assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political communication, public opinion, and political behavior. Via a combination of experimental methods, large datasets, machine learning, and innovative measurement, he studies how people choose, process, spread, and respond to information… read more » Mark Hansen David & Helen Gurley Brown Professor of Journalism & Innovation, Columbia Journalism School Director, David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute of Media Innovation Mark Hansen is the David and Helen Gurley Brown Professor of Journalism and the director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University. He has had over 20 years of collaborations with designers, architects and artists, helping make work that has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the… read more » Jonathan Kramnick Maynard Mack Professor of English, Yale University Jonathan Kramnick is Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University. His research and teaching is in eighteenth-century literature and philosophy, philosophical approaches to literature, and cognitive science and the arts. He is the author of three books. His new book, Paper Minds: Literature and the Ecology of Consciousness (Chicago, 2018), asks what distinctive knowledge… read more » Susana Martinez-Conde Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University Susana Martinez-Conde is an award-winning neuroscientist, author, and professor at the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University. She is the founder and Executive Director of the annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest, which inspired her most recent book, “Champions of Illusion,” published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. Her first book, the… read more » Michael Novacek Curator & Professor of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History Michael J. Novacek is a Curator and Professor of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History and Senior Advisor to the Museum’s President. From 1994 to 2021 he served as the Museum’s Senior Vice President and Provost of Science Awarded a doctoral degree at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Novacek’s studies concern patterns… read more » Yotam Ophir Assistant Professor, Communication, University at Buffalo Yotam Ophir (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2018) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University at Buffalo. His work combines computational methods for text mining, network analysis, experiments and surveys to study media content and effects in the areas of political, science, and health communication. Dr. Ophir authored and co-authored more than 30 peer-review… read more » Francesca Rossi IBM Fellow & IBM AI Ethics Global Leader Francesca Rossi is an IBM Fellow and the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader. She is based at the T.J. Watson IBM Research Lab, New York, USA, where she leads AI research projects. She co-chairs the IBM AI Ethics board and she participates in many global multi-stakeholder initiatives on AI ethics, such as the Partnership on… read more » Nikos Salingaros Professor, Mathematics & Architecture, University of Texas at San Antonio View Papers / Presentations » Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. An internationally recognized Architectural Theorist and Urbanist, his publications include the books Algorithmic Sustainable Design, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction, A Theory of Architecture, Principles of Urban Structure, and Unified Architectural Theory, plus numerous scientific articles. He co-authored with… read more » Karen B. Stern Professor of History, Brooklyn College of the City, University of New York Karen B. Stern is Professor of History at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Her research is deeply interdisciplinary. She studied Classics with honors at Dartmouth College, earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University, and has excavated and conducted field research in different areas of the Mediterranean, including… read more » David Sulzer Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, Columbia University & New York State Psychiatric Institute Dave Sulzer is a professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, and at the School of the Arts at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute. He received a PhD in biology from Columbia University. His lab has published over 250 studies on synaptic function, particularly of the basal ganglia and dopamine systems, and neuroimmunology, in… read more » Marc Van De Mieroop Professor, History, Columbia University Marc Van De Mieroop is a historian of the ancient Near East and Egypt from the beginning of writing to the age of Alexander of Macedon. Besides teaching at Columbia University, he has taught at the University of Oxford and at Yale University. He directs Columbia’s Center for the Ancient Mediterranean. He has published numerous… read more » Dennis Yi Tenen Associate Professor, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University Dennis Yi Tenen is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His teaching and research happen at the intersection of people, texts, and technologies. A long-time affiliate of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and formerly a Microsoft engineer and a Berkman Center for Internet and Society Fellow, his code runs on millions… read more »
Emily Adlam Postdoctoral Associate, Rotman Institute for Philosophy of Science, University of Western Ontario View Papers / Presentations » Emily Adlam is a postdoctoral associate at the Rotman Institute for Philosophy of Science at the University of Western Ontario. She recevied her PhD in relativistic quantum information from the University of Cambridge. Prior to that she completed the Perimeter Scholar’s International programme in theoretical physics, and she did her undergraduate degree in physics and… read more »
Ned Block Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science, New York University Ned Block (Ph.D., Harvard), Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science, came to NYU in 1996 from MIT where he was Chair of the Philosophy Program. He works in philosophy of mind and foundations of neuroscience and cognitive science, and is currently writing a book on attention. He is a Fellow of the American… read more »
György Buzsáki Biggs Professor of Neuroscience, New York University View Papers / Presentations » György Buzsáki identified a hierarchical organization of brain oscillations and proposed how these rhythms support a ‘brain syntax’, a physiological basis of cognitive operations. His work changed how we think about information encoding in the healthy and diseased brain, such as epilepsy and psychiatric diseases. His most influential work is known as the two-stage model… read more »
David Chalmers Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science, New York University Co-Director, Center for Mind, Brain, & Consciousness, New York University View Papers / Presentations » David Chalmers is University Professor of Philosophy and Neural Science and co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness at New York University. He is the author of The Conscious Mind (1996), Constructing the World (2010), and _Reality+: Virtual Worlds and the Problems of Philosophy (2022). He co-founded the Association for the Scientific Study… read more »
Kyunghyun Cho Associate Professor, Computer Science & Data Science, New York University CIFAR Fellow, Learning in Machines & Brains Kyunghyun Cho is an associate professor of computer science and data science at New York University and CIFAR Fellow of Learning in Machines & Brains. He is also a senior director of frontier research at the Prescient Design team within Genentech Research & Early Development (gRED). He was a research scientist at Facebook AI Research… read more »
Elias Dakwar Associate Professor, Clinical Psychiatry, Columbia University Elias Dakwar, MD is an Associate Professor at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, and a board-certified addiction and general psychiatrist. He has been researching novel treatments for addictions for over a decade, with the support of several grants from the National Institutes of Health. A special focus of his research has been evaluating… read more »
Laura Edelson Postdoctoral Researcher, New York University Laura Edelson is a Postdoctoral Researcher at New York University with the Cybersecurity for Democracy project, which she co-directs with Damon McCoy. There, she leads the Ad Observatory and Ad Observer projects, which aim to increase public transparency of digital advertising, particularly during elections. Her research focuses on studying the spread of misinformation and other… read more »
Katherine Elkins Professor of Humanities and Comparative Literature Director of The Integrated Program in Humane Studies Founding Co-Director KDH Lab Kenyon College View Papers / Presentations » Katherine Elkins is Professor of Humanities and faculty in Computing at Kenyon College, where she teaches in the Integrated Program in Humane Studies. She writes about the age-old conversation between philosophy and literature as well as the more recent conversation about AI, language and art. Recent books include The Shapes of Stories with Cambridge University Press, which… read more »
Christopher Fuchs Professor, Physics, College of Science & Mathematics at UMass Boston Christopher Fuchs is a Professor of Physics at the University of Massachusetts Boston who specializes in quantum information theory and quantum foundations. He is an author or co-author of over 160 scholarly pieces, one of which, “Unconditional Quantum Teleportation” with H. J. Kimble’s experimental group, was voted a “Top-Ten Breakthrough of 1998” by the editors of Science. He is a… read more »
Sylvester James Gates Clark Leadership Chair in Science, Distinguished University Professor & Regents Professor, University of Maryland Sylvester James “Jim” Gates, Jr. is a theoretical physicist. He is a University of Maryland University System Regents Professor, the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, and a College Park Professor Emeritus. He currently holds the Clark Leadership Chair in Science and serves as a Professor of Physics with the Physics Department as well as… read more »
Noah Giansiracusa Assistant Professor, Mathematics & Data Science, Bentley University View Papers / Presentations » Noah Giansiracusa (PhD in math from Brown University) is an assistant professor of mathematics and data science at Bentley University. Noah’s research interests include algebraic geometry (the abstract study of systems of polynomial equations and their solutions), machine learning (especially topological and geometric data analysis), artificial intelligence, empirical legal studies, phylogenetics, and misinformation. Noah is… read more »
Peter A. Gloor Research Scientist, Center for Collective Intelligence, MIT's Sloan School of Management View Papers / Presentations » Peter A. Gloor is a Research Scientist at the Center for Collective Intelligence at MIT’s Sloan School of Management where he leads a twenty-year project exploring Collaborative Innovation Networks. He is also Founder and Chief Creative Officer of software company galaxyadvisors, and Honorary Professor at University of Cologne, and at Jilin University, Changchun, China. He… read more »
Andrew Guess Assistant Professor, Politics & Public Affairs, Princeton University Andy Guess is an assistant professor of politics and public affairs at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests lie at the intersection of political communication, public opinion, and political behavior. Via a combination of experimental methods, large datasets, machine learning, and innovative measurement, he studies how people choose, process, spread, and respond to information… read more »
Mark Hansen David & Helen Gurley Brown Professor of Journalism & Innovation, Columbia Journalism School Director, David and Helen Gurley Brown Institute of Media Innovation Mark Hansen is the David and Helen Gurley Brown Professor of Journalism and the director of the Brown Institute for Media Innovation at Columbia University. He has had over 20 years of collaborations with designers, architects and artists, helping make work that has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the… read more »
Jonathan Kramnick Maynard Mack Professor of English, Yale University Jonathan Kramnick is Maynard Mack Professor of English at Yale University. His research and teaching is in eighteenth-century literature and philosophy, philosophical approaches to literature, and cognitive science and the arts. He is the author of three books. His new book, Paper Minds: Literature and the Ecology of Consciousness (Chicago, 2018), asks what distinctive knowledge… read more »
Susana Martinez-Conde Professor of Ophthalmology, Neurology, and Physiology & Pharmacology, SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University Susana Martinez-Conde is an award-winning neuroscientist, author, and professor at the State University of New York Downstate Health Sciences University. She is the founder and Executive Director of the annual Best Illusion of the Year Contest, which inspired her most recent book, “Champions of Illusion,” published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux. Her first book, the… read more »
Michael Novacek Curator & Professor of Paleontology, American Museum of Natural History Michael J. Novacek is a Curator and Professor of Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History and Senior Advisor to the Museum’s President. From 1994 to 2021 he served as the Museum’s Senior Vice President and Provost of Science Awarded a doctoral degree at the University of California, Berkeley, Dr. Novacek’s studies concern patterns… read more »
Yotam Ophir Assistant Professor, Communication, University at Buffalo Yotam Ophir (PhD, University of Pennsylvania, 2018) is an Assistant Professor of Communication at the University at Buffalo. His work combines computational methods for text mining, network analysis, experiments and surveys to study media content and effects in the areas of political, science, and health communication. Dr. Ophir authored and co-authored more than 30 peer-review… read more »
Francesca Rossi IBM Fellow & IBM AI Ethics Global Leader Francesca Rossi is an IBM Fellow and the IBM AI Ethics Global Leader. She is based at the T.J. Watson IBM Research Lab, New York, USA, where she leads AI research projects. She co-chairs the IBM AI Ethics board and she participates in many global multi-stakeholder initiatives on AI ethics, such as the Partnership on… read more »
Nikos Salingaros Professor, Mathematics & Architecture, University of Texas at San Antonio View Papers / Presentations » Dr. Nikos A. Salingaros is Professor of Mathematics and Architecture at the University of Texas at San Antonio. An internationally recognized Architectural Theorist and Urbanist, his publications include the books Algorithmic Sustainable Design, Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction, A Theory of Architecture, Principles of Urban Structure, and Unified Architectural Theory, plus numerous scientific articles. He co-authored with… read more »
Karen B. Stern Professor of History, Brooklyn College of the City, University of New York Karen B. Stern is Professor of History at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. Her research is deeply interdisciplinary. She studied Classics with honors at Dartmouth College, earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Religious Studies from Brown University, and has excavated and conducted field research in different areas of the Mediterranean, including… read more »
David Sulzer Professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, Columbia University & New York State Psychiatric Institute Dave Sulzer is a professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, and at the School of the Arts at Columbia University and New York State Psychiatric Institute. He received a PhD in biology from Columbia University. His lab has published over 250 studies on synaptic function, particularly of the basal ganglia and dopamine systems, and neuroimmunology, in… read more »
Marc Van De Mieroop Professor, History, Columbia University Marc Van De Mieroop is a historian of the ancient Near East and Egypt from the beginning of writing to the age of Alexander of Macedon. Besides teaching at Columbia University, he has taught at the University of Oxford and at Yale University. He directs Columbia’s Center for the Ancient Mediterranean. He has published numerous… read more »
Dennis Yi Tenen Associate Professor, English & Comparative Literature, Columbia University Dennis Yi Tenen is an associate professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His teaching and research happen at the intersection of people, texts, and technologies. A long-time affiliate of Columbia’s Data Science Institute and formerly a Microsoft engineer and a Berkman Center for Internet and Society Fellow, his code runs on millions… read more »
Hello: What a wonderful Roundtable! The subject is necessary and vital as we move on with how technology and psyche integrate to enhance life. The weekend of the Roundtable, I am scheduled for another program and hope some of the contents will be on video, or online to view at a later date. If this is so, and I hope it is, please email me how I can hear the speakers. There will be breaks in the program I am signed onto, and hopefully can visit the Roundtable. Thank you, Eileen Reply
If you cannot make it in person, one can view the roundtables live on our Youtube channel. The video recordings are archived there as well and an audio-only recording can be accessed later via podcast. Reply
I am in the West Coast, so not in person. Will you be sending instructions on how to connect to your Youtube channel and audio recording podcasts? Thank you, Reply
The Youtube link will be live on the day of. If you need to, bookmark our Youtube page. The podcast is available usually a day or two after. Just visit our podcast page on Apple podcasts to get access. Reply
Each roundtable has their own livestream video, which can be found on our Youtube page. Their start and end times will follow the schedule below: Schedule: 10/15 In Search of Lost Time 10AM – 12PM Manipulated Perception?: Fakery, Authenticity, and the Birth of NFTs. 1:30PM – 3:30PM Coding, Fiction, Metafiction 4PM – 6PM 10/16 Are Natural Language Generators for Real? 11:00AM – 1:00PM Is the Universe a Metaverse? 2:00 – 4:00PM Reply