第7講　5月30日（金）

宋 冰（バーグルエン研究所副所長、同中国センター主任）
「Ideas for A Changing World –– Reconceptualizing Myriad Things」

The purpose of my talk is to share with you the key mission of the Berggruen Institute and our intellectual projects undertaken so far in furthering our mission. It is interesting to note that our Institute’s tagline “Ideas for a Changing World (思想改变世界)” echos with your mission of “Liberal Arts Education for Change (教养推动变革)”.While we may have different focused audience and ways of engagement, we certainly have similar and complementary aspirations. At the Berggruen Institute, we view disruptive technology and transformative geopolitical shift as philosophical and intellectual events. Disruption and transformation necessarily bring about ruptures in our thinking and destabilize assumptions about who we are and how we perceive and understand others and the world. For example, the invention of the printing technology in the early modern days and ubiquitous adoption of internet more recently did not just alter how we perform tasks and reshape our interactions with each other, more importantly, they reconfigured how we conceptualize ourselves, agency, knowledge and truth. Similarly, the recent rapid development of frontier science and technology has also triggered reconsideration into foundational notions and institutions that have shaped our worldviews and guided the human society in recent centuries. At this juncture, we reopen the inquiry on many seemingly self-evident truths and ask ourselves the following: what it means to be human now that AI systems and devices are integral to our existence? What is natural and what is artificial? Where shall we draw the boundaries, if any, between humans and AI systems? How should we interact with AI systems which can learn, adapt, and auto-enhance? What is beyond intelligence which is unique to humans? At the existential level, will they overwhelm and replace us? Do they spell the end of humanity? Against this backdrop, Berggruen Institute’s China Center designed a program area – frontier science and technology and East Asian Philosophies, under which we have been developing several multi-year projects such as Intelligence and Wisdom – AI meets Chinese Philosophers, and Symbiosis in Life Sciences and the Notion of Gongsheng/Kyosei (共生). More recently, we began to explore consciousness and Eastern traditions. We intend to challenge and enrich the discussion of those foundational questions by tapping into East Asian philosophies, folk religions and social practices. Our goal is to reinvigorate ancient philosophical and intellectual traditions within contemporary contexts, leveraging timeless wisdom to deepen our understanding of today’s challenges and foster creative solutions. In this talk, I will share with you some of the findings which came out of these projects and seek your thoughts and comments.