In this ALIGN webinar, we invited Shigeru Kobayashi, Professor at the Institute of Advanced Media Arts and Sciences (IAMAS).
After working at a major electronic musical instrument maker, he received a PhD in media design from the Graduate School of Media Design at Keio University, and he now teaches and does research at the IAMAS Graduate School of Media Creation. Alongside his work in media art, he revisits the philosophy of technology to discuss today’s technological environment and relate it to his own practice. His book Hermeneutics of Technology (in Japanese), published online as a third draft in May 2024, draws on postphenomenology, fundamental informatics and Bergson’s philosophy of time in search of ways to engage with technology here in Japan, which is neither the West nor China.
He outlined the book and the perspectives these philosophical tools offer for thinking about the relationship between AI and humans in Japan. A cross-talk with our chair Koichi Takahashi followed, on what a Japanese understanding of AI alignment and of its research practice might look like, and then a discussion with participants. The webinar was held in Japanese on Zoom.