{"id":10869,"date":"2026-03-11T09:08:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T13:08:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/?p=10869"},"modified":"2026-05-01T09:14:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-01T13:14:11","slug":"visiting-speaker-sarah-pourciau-duke-speaks-on-ai-semiotics-and-the-subsymbolic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/2026\/03\/11\/visiting-speaker-sarah-pourciau-duke-speaks-on-ai-semiotics-and-the-subsymbolic\/","title":{"rendered":"Visiting Speaker Sarah Pourciau (Duke) speaks on AI, Semiotics, and the Subsymbolic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What are the hidden philosophical assumptions behind modern machine learning? Sarah Pourciau (Duke University) traces contemporary AI back to its 1986 foundations, arguing that the &#8220;subsymbolic&#8221; approach is best understood through Kantian aesthetics and Peircean semiotics \u2014 with surprising consequences for how we think about today&#8217;s AI models and their mysterious &#8220;latent spaces.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Co-sponsored by the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute and Data Science and AI Institute<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tuesday, March 11, 5:30\u20137:00pm | Gilman 479<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1024\" height=\"683\" src=\"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/Sarah-Pourciau-Poster-1024x683.jpg\" alt=\"Sarah Pourciau Poster\" class=\"wp-image-10720\" srcset=\"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/Sarah-Pourciau-Poster-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/Sarah-Pourciau-Poster-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/Sarah-Pourciau-Poster-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/Sarah-Pourciau-Poster-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/Sarah-Pourciau-Poster-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/31\/2026\/02\/Sarah-Pourciau-Poster-240x160.jpg 240w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What are the hidden philosophical assumptions behind modern machine learning? Sarah Pourciau (Duke University) traces contemporary AI back to its 1986 foundations, arguing that the &#8220;subsymbolic&#8221; approach is best understood [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":786,"featured_media":10720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tec_requires_first_save":true,"_EventAllDay":false,"_EventTimezone":"","_EventStartDate":"","_EventEndDate":"","_EventStartDateUTC":"","_EventEndDateUTC":"","_EventShowMap":false,"_EventShowMapLink":false,"_EventURL":"","_EventCost":"","_EventCostDescription":"","_EventCurrencySymbol":"","_EventCurrencyCode":"","_EventCurrencyPosition":"","_EventDateTimeSeparator":"","_EventTimeRangeSeparator":"","_EventOrganizerID":[],"_EventVenueID":[],"_OrganizerEmail":"","_OrganizerPhone":"","_OrganizerWebsite":"","_VenueAddress":"","_VenueCity":"","_VenueCountry":"","_VenueProvince":"","_VenueState":"","_VenueZip":"","_VenuePhone":"","_VenueURL":"","_VenueStateProvince":"","_VenueLat":"","_VenueLng":"","_VenueShowMap":false,"_VenueShowMapLink":false,"_tribe_blocks_recurrence_rules":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_description":"","_tribe_blocks_recurrence_exclusions":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"program":[10445],"class_list":["post-10869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","program-german"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/786"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10869"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10869\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10870,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10869\/revisions\/10870"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10869"},{"taxonomy":"program","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/krieger.jhu.edu\/modern-languages-literatures\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/program?post=10869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}