I'm a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in philosophy at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
Previously, I was the 2020 Robert A. Burt Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience in the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University. I completed my DPhil (PhD) in philosophy at the University of Oxford.
My interests lie mainly within the philosophy of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and mind.
I'm particularly interested in gaining a better understanding of modern artificial neural networks based on deep learning architectures, such as large language models. Assessing the capacities and limitations of these models is a challenging and interdisciplinary endeavor. I believe philosophy can provide important insights to establish fair and meaningful comparisons between machines and humans in various domains, including language processing and reasoning. In return, studying artificial neural networks might inform theorizing about human cognition.
I am also interested in the nature and scope of self-representation; ethical and safety issues related to the development and deployment of AI; issues related to the relationship between art and technology; issues related to the conceptualization and taxonomy of global states of consciousness, such as post-comatose disorders of consciousness and drug-induced states; and methodological issues regarding the use of first-person reports in neuroscience.
Contact: {first name}.{last name}@mq.edu.au
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