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Are you looking for a challenging position in a dynamic setting? The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC) currently has a vacant PhD position as part of the the UvA starter grant Making (none)sense with AI, led by principal investigator Dr. Davide Beraldo. The Institute for Logic, Language and Computation (ILLC), is an interfaculty research institute of the Faculty of Humanities and the Faculty of Science.
What are you going to do?
The recent breakthroughs in Large Language Models (LLMs) have reinvigorated the debate around the status of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in relation to the notions of meaning and sense-making. It has become commonplace to directly adopt the vocabulary characteristic of Human Intelligence (HI) when describing the properties and performances of AI. For instance, LLMs such as ChatGPT are often said to “learn”, “communicate” and “understand”. But in what sense can machines be said to “make sense”? Since the inception of information processing technologies, this grand question has occupied theorists and researchers across many disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and computer science. Within these fields, meaning is typically approached as an abstract property of language, an individual outcome of cognition, or a formal task of computation.
This project aims to build upon alternative approaches that emphasize the relational, processual, and reflexive nature of meaning. For example, ethnomethodology is a heterodox sociological approach that conceptualizes meaning as emerging from the concrete, ongoing, empirical context of social interaction. It positions itself as the study of “ethnomethods”—the practices people employ to make sense of and make sense to one another. While ethnomethodology has been highly influential in the field of Human-Machine Interaction, the advent of LLMs opens up radically new avenues for exploring the “barrier of meaning” between humans and machines, and for reflecting on how humans and machines make (and don’t make) sense of, to, and with each other.
This PhD project seeks to explore the issue of meaning(-making) in relation to AI from perspectives that emphasize its relational, processual, and reflexive nature—drawing inspiration from ethnomethodology, but also open to other approaches such as socio-semiotics and systems theory. The project combines theoretical development with empirical investigation of encounters between humans and LLMs, or other instances of conversational/social AI. The overarching goal is to contribute to the respecification of the debate on the boundaries between the human and the artificial, grounded in theoretical reflexivity and methodological rigor.
Candidates can develop studies of their own choosing within the broader scope of the project. We welcome research ideas that combine ambitious theoretical development with empirical research; the latter based on a number of methods including observational studies, conversation analysis, (quasi-)experiments, or computational methods. We invite interested candidates to prepare short proposals (details below) inspired by, but not limited to, the following themes:
Tasks and responsibilities
What do you have to offer?
You are a promising student with the ambition to pursue an academic career. You are interested in both theoretical and empirical research. You are curious about exploring unconventional and heterodox academic approaches. You have the capacity to balance work and leisure in a healthy and sustainable manner.
Your experience and profile
Candidates need to have the following qualifications:
Experience with computational methods, software development and/or the technical aspects of AI are a plus.
Please note that if you already hold a doctorate/PhD or are working towards obtaining a similar degree elsewhere, you will not be admitted to a doctoral programme at the UvA.
What can we offer you?
We offer a temporary employment contract for the period of 48 months. The first contract will be for 16 months, with an extension for the following 32 months, contingent on a positive performance evaluation within the first 12 months. The employment contract is for 38 hours a week. The preferred starting date is 01 February 2025.
Your salary is in the first year of the employment contract € 2,872 and in the last year a maximum of € 3,670 gross per month on the basis of a full working week of 38 hours. This sum does not include the 8% holiday allowance and the 8,3% year-end allowance. Favourable tax agreements may apply to applicants moving from abroad. The Collective Labour Agreement of Dutch Universities is applicable.
What else do we offer?
The University of Amsterdam is one of the largest comprehensive universities in Europe. With some 40,000 students, 6,000 staff, 3,000 PhD candidates, and an annual budget of more than 850 million euros, it is also one of Amsterdam’s biggest employers.
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