Lauren Klein

On Models and Marbles: Reasoning and Interpretation in the Age of AI

While reasoning is most often upheld as the goal of AI model development, this talk proposes that a second, equally foundational human capability deserves our attention: interpretation. By interpretation, I mean not the domain of logical inference but of meaning-making—the process of asking, given a particular object of culture—a poem, a historical letter, a dance performance, or an Instagram pic--what does it really mean? With examples ranging from the 1972 "Blue Marble" photograph of the earth from outer space, to the "world models” that are currently a focus of AI/ML research, I will argue that reasoning does not merely exist in relation to interpretation, but fundamentally depends on it. I will further argue that expertise in interpretation is what humanities scholars can bring to AI/ML research. Because it is creative, judgment-driven, and irreducibly human, interpretation is precisely what will continue to push forward the bounds of what we can model—and, therefore, what we can know.