THE WORK

What does it mean to think about the social aspects of artificial intelligence in the medieval period, or ancient Rome?

What kind of history of neuroscience can make sense of the political and ethical stakes of seriously messing with our brains?

What would Alexander Pope have made of Large Language Models?

NNAI aims to locate innovative, critical and unconventional research possibilities, at the edges of AI, neuroscience, or cognition with the tools of humanities research: history, literature, philosophy, ethnography and the arts. We start from the assumption that even where it seems most distant from contemporary science and technology, the lessons of the humanities are more vital and incisive than ever.

NNAI’s approach raises the intellectual tenor of current debates, we support proposals that intervene in ideas beyond a single discipline or topical debate; forge new concepts, approaches and questions; or support the excellence of work that is already ongoing. We value a collective cross-discipline cultivation of research ideas that include faculty seminars, public lectures, events or symposiums, and ultimately lead to funding undergraduate, graduate students, or post-doctoral research projects.

NNAI is devoted to fostering dialogue and creative, unconventional innovation. Universities remain places driven by narrow disciplinary specialization, buried in the sedimentary layers of department culture and bureaucratic gridlock: NNAI aims to counterbalance this by providing a place for faculty and students to interact, think, tinker with ideas and questions, ask dumb questions and also very smart ones not asked elsewhere in the university. We foster this community through the deliberate and surprisingly hard work of getting people into a room together, finding opportunities for innovation or fostering a mutual respect for different approaches to the problems facing us today, and in the past.