ARISTOTLE IN THE ERA OF ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE


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The Academy of Athens together with the Academy of Cyprus are organizing a symposium on Aristotle and Artificial Intelligence to be held at the premises of the Athens Academy during the period of 7-10 of April 2025. 

Could Aristotle, the first thinker on the systemization of human thought, be considered today as one of the forefathers of the thinking machines of Artificial Intelligence? Much emphasis has been put over the years on his conception of strict logical reasoning, but his wider notion and methods of dialectic argument can arguably provide a foundational understanding of the nature of human thinking and how this relates to our individual and social lives. Notwithstanding his systematic study on the validity of arguments, his understanding of logical reasoning can be seen to permeate within his investigation of many other matters, whether this is scientific enquiry, ethical behaviour or political governance. Nonetheless, the possible relation between Aristotle’s conception of human thought and the emergence of thinking machines remains in statu nascendi

The symposium will explore these foundational links of Aristotle’s ideas on logical reasoning and the practice of reasoning in human endeavours, to the concept, design and utilization of AI thinking machines. It aspires to examine Aristotle over a wide spectrum of his possible relevance to AI, ranging from the underlying building blocks of AI on methods of learning and reasoning, to the metaphysics of knowledge and science, to the morality of thinking machines. Already we have studies of the link between Aristotelian Ethics and AI Ethics (amongst them is the Lyceum Project of AI Ethics with Aristotle with a meeting held in Athens in June 2024), proposing novel approaches for the regulation of AI and the synthesis of AI entities into the human society.  The symposium will have an emphasis on Aristotle’s ideas on the computational aspects of reasoning and its practical application and their relevance to AI. As such, it will also include a special workshop on the computational aspects of Aristotle’s Syllogistic logic.

The nature of the symposium is intended to be explorative. By bringing together Aristotelian scholars and other researchers with links to Artificial Intelligence, the symposium aims to provide an environment where the potential role of Aristotle to AI can be explored and oriented.