Distributed cognition and cognitive ethnography meet generative artificial intelligence

New session of the "Paris IAS Ideas" online talk series, with the participation of Ed Hutchins UCSD / Paris IAS Fellow.

The "Paris IAS Ideas" online talk series features short and stimulating presentations from fellows of the Paris Institute for Advanced Study, marking the beginning of 1-month writing residencies.

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Presentation

Traditional cognitive science has always worked from the inside out. In Cognition in the Wild (1995), Hutchins attempted to work from the outside in. He showed how systems larger than an individual can have cognitive properties of their own, and how a careful description of what people actually do can limit the functional specification of internal cognitive processes.

This project proposes to combine three ideas. One: simultaneously examine structures and processes external to a person, processes internal to a person, and the dynamics of interactions among these processes. Two: model internal processing on the architecture of generative artificial intelligence. Three: emphasize the cultural organization of human experience. None of these elements is new, but they have not previously been combined in a way that yields a coherent perspective on human cognition.