Synthetic Socio-Technical Systems: Poiêsis as Meaning Making

With the recent renewed interest in AI, the field has made substantial advancements, particularly in generative systems. Increased computational power and the availability of very large datasets has enabled systems such as ChatGPT to effectively replicate aspects of human social interactions, such as verbal communication, thus bringing about profound changes in society. In this paper, we explain that the arrival of generative AI systems marks a shift from ‘interacting through’ to ‘interacting with’ technologies and calls for a reconceptualization of socio-technical systems as we currently understand them. We dub this new generation of socio-technical systems synthetic to signal the increased interactions between human and artificial agents, and, in the footsteps of philosophers of information, we cash out agency in terms of ‘poiêsis’. We close the paper with a discussion of the potential policy implications of synthetic socio-technical system

Getting Serious about the Development of Computational Humor

Society needs humor, not just for entertainment. In the Web age, presentations become more and more flexible and personalized and they will require humor contributions for electronic commerce developments (e.g. product promotion, getting selective attention, help in memorizing names etc.) more or less as it happened in the world of broadcasted advertisement. Even if deep modeling of humor in all of its facets is not something for the near future, there is something concrete that has been achieved and that can help in providing attention to the field. The paper refers to the results of a project devoted to humorous acronym production, a circumscribed task that nonetheless requires various generic components. The project, the first ever sponsored by the European Union in computational humor, opens the way to developments for creative language, with applications in the world of advertisemen

Getting Serious about the Development of Computational Humor

none2Society needs humor, not just for entertainment. In the Web age, presentations become more and more flexible and personalized and they will require humor contributions for electronic commerce developments (e.g. product promotion, getting selective attention, help in memorizing names etc.) more or less as it happened in the world of broadcasted advertisement. Even if deep modeling of humor in all of its facets is not something for the near future, there is something concrete that has been achieved and that can help in providing attention to the field. The paper refers to the results of a project devoted to humorous acronym production, a circumscribed task that nonetheless requires various generic components. The project, the first ever sponsored by the European Union in computational humor, opens the way to developments for creative language, with applications in the world of advertisementIRST. Protocol no. T02-12-59Oliviero Stock; Carlo StrapparavaStock, Oliviero; Strapparava, Carl