Heidegger, Skill, and the Conversational Structure of Human Work

Abstract

AI is transforming how we think about work and intelligence. Many are claiming that AI systems will soon be able to do all the work that human beings do. This claim has a long and somewhat dubious history in the field of AI. To assess its plausibility, it helps to develop a deeper account of the nature of human work and agency. In this talk, I share work in progress aimed at this goal. I trace a tradition that runs from Heidegger’s ontology of human agency, to the theory of skilled activity articulated by Stuart and Hubert Dreyfus (the Dreyfus Skill Model), to the account of the conversational structure of human work developed by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores in Understanding Computers and Cognition.