4 May 2022
The “Banal” Deception of Digital Presence – Projecting Life onto Media and Machines, from Turing to Siri

Simone Natale

20 November 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Immersed in science

Ilaria Ampollini

9 November 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
The burning gaze. An aesthetics of shame in the age of the virtual

Federica Cavaletti

2 November 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Forms of the intermediary: spatiality and durations between technology and aesthetics

Neda Zanetti

12 October 2023
2023/24 /ɪˈməːʃən/
111
Virtualizing Spaces: Immersive and Emersive Images from Home to City.

Fabrizia Bandi

28 September 2023
2022/23 Practices
108
LabSim: a fully featured laboratory simulator for innovative teaching of analytical chemistry
27 September 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Immersive Rhythms, Dismersive Images: On Music Video’s Affective Atmosphere

Tomáš Jirsa

18 May 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Spatialization of Sound

Markus Ophälders

16 May 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Resonance, dissonance, and things that get under one’s skin

Susanna Paasonen

28 April 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
The Genealogy of Images. From Focillon and Warburg to Computer Vision and Contemporary Semiotics

Maria Giulia Dondero

27 April 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Between Picture Theory and World View: a Wölfflinian Approach

Michael Jenewein in conversation with Lambert Wiesing and Thomas Zingelmann

19 April 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Style and World View: Wölfflin, Schwitters, Beuys.

Lambert Wiesing

3 March 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Who is here when I am here?

Michel Reilhac

17 February 2023
2022/23 Practices
108
Another Reality

Immersive Solutions from Training to Business.

16 February 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
About presence: perception, technologies, immersive environments.

Enrico Pitozzi

3 February 2023
2022/23 Practices
108
Mixed reality for doctors. The ARTICOR software for cardiovascular interventions
1 February 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
At the roots of digital: in praise of a rhizomatic archaeology

Francesco Casetti

20 January 2023
2022/23 Practices
108
Active Learning of Industrial Chemical Processes By Virtual Immersive Laboratory: The Eye4edu Project

Carlo Pirola

19 January 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Sensing Cinema Heritage. For a multisensory approach to film heritage

Andrea Mariani, Eleonora Roaro

10 January 2023
2022/23 Multisensoriality
104
Archaeology of immersion

Barbara Le Maître, Natacha Pernac, Jennifer Verraes

16 December 2022
2022/23 Practices
108
What XR can do for a Museum

Luca Roncella

research: Seminar

2022 Presence
98

The “Banal” Deception of Digital Presence – Projecting Life onto Media and Machines, from Turing to Siri

Simone Natale

The companion chatbot Replika is a commercial app that offers users the experience of entertaining conversation with an artificial avatar powered by software. Although most if not all users know perfectly well that Replika is not a person and is incapable of empathy and emotion, many nonetheless enjoy what they feel as the companionship of the chatbot. Their engagement with Replika evokes an apparent contradiction characterising people’s interaction with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies: how can one be perfectly aware that an effect of presence and liveness is just a simulation, and still be drawn to it? The talk addresses this question by considering elements of the history of AI, from the Turing Test through the first chatbot ELIZA to contemporary voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri. Presenting materials from my latest monograph, Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test(Oxford University Press, 2021), I will argue that behind effects of digital presence lie an ordinary, “banal” deception that allows users to feel a sense of closeness and intimacy with people who are not physically present or do not even exist.

Biography

Simone Natale, University of Turin

Simone Natale is Associate Professor at the University of Turin, Italy and Visiting Fellow at Loughborough University, UK, where he taught and researched from 2015 to 2020. He is the author of two monographs, Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Supernatural Entertainments: Victorian Spiritualism and the Rise of Modern Media Culture (Penn State University Press, 2016), and of articles published in journals including New Media and Society, Communication Theory, the Journal of Communication, and Convergence. His research has been funded by leading international institutions including the Humboldt Foundation and the DAAD in Germany, AHRC and ESRC in the UK, and Columbia University’s Italian Academy in the US. Since 2019, he is Assistant Editor of Media, Culture & Society.

research: seminar

The “Banal” Deception of Digital Presence – Projecting Life onto Media and Machines, from Turing to Siri

Simone Natale

The companion chatbot Replika is a commercial app that offers users the experience of entertaining conversation with an artificial avatar powered by software. Although most if not all users know perfectly well that Replika is not a person and is incapable of empathy and emotion, many nonetheless enjoy what they feel as the companionship of the chatbot. Their engagement with Replika evokes an apparent contradiction characterising people’s interaction with Artificial Intelligence (AI) and other digital technologies: how can one be perfectly aware that an effect of presence and liveness is just a simulation, and still be drawn to it? The talk addresses this question by considering elements of the history of AI, from the Turing Test through the first chatbot ELIZA to contemporary voice assistants such as Alexa and Siri. Presenting materials from my latest monograph, Deceitful Media: Artificial Intelligence and Social Life after the Turing Test(Oxford University Press, 2021), I will argue that behind effects of digital presence lie an ordinary, “banal” deception that allows users to feel a sense of closeness and intimacy with people who are not physically present or do not even exist.

4 May 2022
17:00
19:00

Dipartimento di Filosofia

Sala Martinetti

Via Festa del Perdono, 7

The “Banal” Deception of Digital Presence – Projecting Life onto Media and Machines, from Turing to Siri
Simone Natale
Dipartimento di Filosofia
Sala Martinetti
Via Festa del Perdono, 7
20220504
17:00
19:00