As an inter­dis­cip­lin­ary research cen­ter, we at the RHET AI Cen­ter want to foster inter­dis­cip­lin­ary exchange not only in our research work, but also in uni­ver­sity teach­ing. For this reas­on, Nina Kal­wa and Markus Gott­schling offered a sem­in­ar in cooper­a­tion with each oth­er dur­ing the winter semester 2024/25. 

Par­ti­cipants from Nina Kalwa's sem­in­ar Lin­guist­ic and Rhet­or­ic­al Approaches to Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence at the Lin­guist­ics Cen­ter of the Uni­ver­sity of Zurich were guests at the Sem­in­ar for Gen­er­al Rhet­or­ic at the Uni­ver­sity of Tübin­gen from 13–14 Decem­ber 2024. There they met the stu­dents from Markus Gottschling's sem­in­ar Rhet­or­ic­al Per­spect­ives on AI. 

Both sem­in­ar groups care­fully pre­pared for the exchange before­hand. Nina Kalwa's stu­dents ini­tially focused on the lin­guist­ic per­spect­ive on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence dur­ing a block week­end in October: 

AI from a linguistic perspective — an insight into the Zurich seminar 

Gen­er­at­ive AI uses the same token sys­tems that we humans use in our com­mu­nic­a­tion. When using gen­er­at­ive AI, we often get the impres­sion that we are "talk­ing" to the AI. How­ever, gen­er­at­ive AI is trained to out­put prob­ab­il­ity-based char­ac­ters that come as close as pos­sible to nat­ur­al lan­guage. At the same time, AI is also highly rel­ev­ant to soci­ety, so there is a lot of pub­lic debate about it. As a res­ult, vari­ous lin­guist­ic sub-dis­cip­lines can also con­trib­ute to the study and research of arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The sem­in­ar posed the ques­tion of wheth­er AI can be ascribed sim­il­ar lin­guist­ic com­pet­ence to humans. To this end, research lit­er­at­ure was con­sul­ted and discussed. 

In a next step, the sem­in­ar dis­cussed which lin­guist­ic sub-dis­cip­lines are spe­cific­ally inter­ested in research on arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence. The stu­dents worked out the spe­cif­ics of dif­fer­ent lin­guist­ic sub-dis­cip­lines and then developed poten­tial research­er iden­tit­ies who con­duct research on AI from very dif­fer­ent per­spect­ives. The sem­in­ar par­ti­cipants then came up with their own lin­guist­ic research ques­tions on the top­ic of AI as well as their own small AI research pro­ject, which was presen­ted to the Tübin­gen stu­dents in December. 

At the same time in Tübingen: The question of AI and rhetoric 

Markus Gottschling's sem­in­ar group had been explor­ing the ques­tion of rhet­or­ic­al per­spect­ives on AI in weekly sem­in­ar ses­sions since Octo­ber. AI is a rel­ev­ant sub­ject of research for rhet­or­ic because both — rhet­or­ic and AI — use lan­guage gen­er­at­ively. The influ­ence of AI com­mu­nic­a­tion on the pub­lic could lead to massive changes in stra­tegic rhet­or­ic­al areas. These sim­il­ar­it­ies and their con­sequences were explored in the seminar. 

To this end, the sem­in­ar par­ti­cipants focused on research lit­er­at­ure on the top­ic and dis­cussed it. In addi­tion, the stu­dents atten­ded the Per­suas­ive Algorithms — The Rhet­or­ic of Gen­er­at­ive AI con­fer­ence in Novem­ber 2024 to observe cur­rent research and issues in the field of AI and rhet­or­ic. These obser­va­tions were then dis­cussed togeth­er in the weekly sem­in­ar. Based on the back­ground of the lit­er­at­ure received and the con­fer­ence, the stu­dents cre­ated their own present­a­tions as state­ments based on rhet­or­ic­al per­spect­ives on AI. They presen­ted these to the Zurich stu­dents at the joint block sem­in­ar weekend. 

Lively exchange at the joint block seminar 

In Decem­ber, the stu­dents' pre­par­a­tion paid off at the joint block sem­in­ar week­end, for which the Zurich stu­dents traveled to Tübin­gen. The stu­dents from the indi­vidu­al groups presen­ted the res­ults of their pre­lim­in­ary the­or­et­ic­al con­sid­er­a­tions and research approaches to each oth­er and dis­cussed them: the dis­cip­lin­ary dif­fer­ences between the two sub­jects and their res­ult­ing view of AI quickly became clear. And yet inter­faces and pos­sible joint approaches to the top­ic were also worked out well. 

The pre­par­a­tions of the indi­vidu­al groups also com­ple­men­ted each oth­er well. While the Zurich stu­dents were able to bring an excit­ing, prac­tic­al approach to the top­ic to the sem­in­ar through their own small prac­tic­al pro­jects and stud­ies, the Tübin­gen stu­dents sup­ple­men­ted the dis­course with their in-depth the­or­et­ic­al knowledge. 

With so many excit­ing approaches, there was still not enough time to dis­cuss all the ideas, even on an entire week­end. Nev­er­the­less, the par­ti­cipants and lec­tur­ers look back on the sem­in­ar feel­ing enriched and with (new) enthusiasm.