AI and Humanity
Interdisciplinary Conference
8-9 May 2025
Conveners: Sorin Antohi, Gheorghe Ștefan, Paul-Andrei Păun
Partners: Master Communications International, Muzeul Municipiului București, and ClubLeaderSpace
Romanian Academy
Calea Victoriei 125, Bucharest
AI and Humanity Conference click here for pdf version!
To assess the vast, transdisciplinary, highly topical theme of AI and Humanity, an interdisciplinary conference is convened on 8-9 May 2025.
This academic, professional, and public event builds on the successful experience of a previous conference, The Challenge of AI, under the aegis of the Academia Europaea, and with support from the Romanian Academy. It took place at World Trade Center, Bucharest, on 11-12 June 2024, was organized by Master Communications International and sponsored by several companies; its details, videos, and related texts are at www.mastercommunications.ro.
This time around, we meet under the double aegis of the Academia Europaea (AE) and of the Romanian Academy (RA), in conjunction with the inauguration on 9 May of the AE Bucharest Regional Knowledge Hub, a strategic project of the two academies with partners from several countries, ranging from national academies to universities, research institutes, global academic networks and organizations. It is our aim to continue to develop a series of conferences and workshops bearing the same generic title, AI and Humanity, as well as a network of institutions and companies that could collaborate in the long term. The conference is also connected to the Ideas in the Agora Series, which includes some 110 public events (dialogues and conferences), placed since 2024 under the aegis of the Academia Europaea. More at Idei în Agora – Muzeul Municipiului Bucuresti.
The current event has two parts: A. An academic part, open to the public. B. A professional part, for registered participants only. The videos are to become available online in various places, including the homepage of the AE Bucharest Hub, www.acadeurobucharest.eu.
8 May, 13:30-18:30, Aula
13:30-14:00 Registration
I. 14:00-16:00
- Sorin Antohi, Moderator and Opening Remarks, AI and Humanity: Co-Evolution or Survival of the Fittest?
- Sebastian Burduja, Opening Remarks
- Gheorghe Ștefan, The Information Realm and the Great Chain of Being
- Paul-Andrei Păun, Artificial Intelligence: Past, Present, Future
- Mircea Dumitru, LLMs and Speech Acts. What Is at Stake?
- Viorica Pătrăucean, LLMs and Cultural Technologies
- Traian Rebedea, Safe and Controllable Human-LLM Interactions
Break 16:00-16:30
II. 16:30-18:30
- Sorin Antohi, Moderator and Closing Remarks
- Hardy Schloer, Implications of AI for Social Security, Human Progress, and Survival
- Ion Petre, Unravelling Academic Success: AI Insights from the PISA 2022 Data
- Florin-Călin Păun, Qualificative AI (QuAI): Bringing Dubito ergo cogito into the Machine
- Marius Leordeanu, Artificial Intelligence in Search for Humanity
- Ștefan N. Constantinescu, European Academies and Scientific Advice to the European Commission: From Cancer Screening to AI and One Health Governance
- Moshe Idel, Golem and the Beginning of Cybernetics via Zoom
9 May, 10:00-13:00, Clubul Academicienilor
In Romanian
Prof. Dragoș Huru, Moderator
9:30-10:00 Welcome coffee
10:00-13:00 Presentations, Interventions, Discussion with:
- Dr. Florin Munteanu
- Prof. Petre Roman
- Laurențiu Viorel Gîdei
- Alexandru Bodi
- Marian Rusu
- Veronica Ștefan
- Dr. Honorius Circa
- Cristian Sima
- Elena Radu
- Alexandru Mironov
Participants
- Sorin Antohi, Academia Europaea
- Alexandru Bodi, Partner, DAO1
- Sebastian Burduja, Minister of Energy
- Honorius Circa, Director, ASF (Authority of Financial Surveillance)
- Ștefan N. Constantinescu, UC Louvain, Brussels, and University of Oxford, Chair of SAPEA Board
- Mircea Dumitru, Vice-President of the Romanian Academy
- Laurențiu Viorel Gîdei, State Secretary, MEDAT (Ministry of Economy, Digitalization, Entrepreneurship, and Tourism)
- Dragoș Huru, ASE (Academy of Economic Sciences)
- Moshe Idel, emeritus, Hebrew University; Shalom Hartman Institute, Jerusalem
- Marius Leordeanu, UPB, Institute of Mathematics of the Romanian Academy
- Alexandru Mironov, Director, Știință și Tehnică
- Florin Munteanu, Director, Center for Complexity Studies, Bucharest
- Viorica Pătrăucean, Google DeepMind
- Florin-Călin Păun, ARESIA, ONERA
- Paul-Andrei Păun, Director, AI Institute of the Romanian Academy
- Ion Petre, University of Turku
- Elena Radu, lawyer
- Traian Rebedea, UPB and NVIDIA
- Petre Roman, President, Swiss UMEF-Geneva
- Marian Rusu, ChatIA
- Hardy Schloer, CEO Alpha Centauri
- Cristian Sima, professor, businessman
- Gheorghe Ștefan, Romanian Academy and UPB (Bucharest Polytechnic University)
- Veronica Ștefan, expert, Council of Europe
- Varujan Vosganian, Dr. Varujan Vosganian, President, Writers’ Union
