Robinson's Podcast
Robinson's Podcast
Robinson Erhardt
84 - Chris Potts: Semantics, Pragmatics, and ChatGPT
1 hour 20 minutes Posted May 2, 2023 at 4:00 pm.
In This Episode…
Introduction
Chris and Linguistics
Linguistics and Philosophy
Proper Names and Reference
The Principle of Compositionality
Adjectives, Innateness, and Chomsky
Quantifiers
Swearing and Linguistics
ChatGPT in the Linguistics Classroom
Does ChatGPT Understand?
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1:20:49
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Show notes
Chris Potts is Professor and Chair of the Department of Linguistics at Stanford University, and also Professor by courtesy in the Department of Computer Science at the same. Chris has worked on a wide variety of topics in linguistics throughout his career, but has published on conventional implicature—check out his book, Logic of Conventional Implicatures (Oxford, 2003)—large language models, and compositional reasoning, among many other subjects. Robinson and Chris begin by discussing the relationship between linguistics and philosophy before turning to topics in semantics and pragmatics—references, the principle of compositionality, swearing, and more. After some thoughts on Chomsky’s legacy in linguistics, they talk about the impact of ChatGPT on the classroom and whether large language models are capable of understanding.
Robinson’s Website: http://robinsonerhardt.com
Robinson Erhardt researches symbolic logic and the foundations of mathematics at Stanford University. Join him in conversations with philosophers, scientists, weightlifters, artists, and everyone in-between.