VRAI Lab
Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence Lab
Using Philosophy to Understand Virtual Spaces and Machine Learning Processes
What We Do
Blending the Philosophical with the Computational
The Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence (VRAI) Lab is run by the Department of Philosophy at Purdue University. Headed by Dr. Javier Gomez-Lavin, the lab utilizes high-end computers to both train and analyze machine learning algorithms, such as LLMs, as well as virtual reality software packages and headsets to study perception and cognition in virtual spaces. The VRAI Lab has a research focus in the conceptual, cognitive, epistemic, and moral questions that undergird the accelerating development of tomorrow's technologies.
Our Schedule
Events and Times
PuNCs Live! Speaker Series
October 22
John Dyck
(Auburn University)
"Simple Beauty"
From 5:30-6:30PM in PFEN 103
Light refreshments provided.
It seems clear that things can be aesthetically valuable, or beautiful, because they are simple. But this is a controversial idea. Some people allege that simple things could never be beautiful because they cannot warrant sustained appreciation. Beauty always draws us back, and simple art doesn’t give us anything to come back to.
I defend simple beauty against this allegation. Simple beauties, I argue, present existential truths that are worth coming back to because of their importance and our forgetfulness.
Previous PuNCs Live! Talks
September 27
Laura Soter, "Investigating Children's Theory of Belief Change"
CL@I Speaker Series
Previous CL@I Talks
August 23
Daniel Herrmann, "Belief Representations of LLMs"
Other Events
November 22
First Symposium on Ethical, Social and Policy issues in HPC (ESP-HPC24)
ESP-HPC24 will be a half-day symposium
Friday November 22, 8:30am -- Noon
Held in conjunction with SC24: The International Conference on High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis, November 17-22, Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Find out how you can contribute in our Call for Abstracts (Due to popular demand, we've extended the submission deadline ... see the CFA)
Advances in HPC raise enduring and difficult social, economic, epistemological, and ethical issues. This fact is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the high-profile ethical and legal issues raised by the successes of artificial intelligence. But there exist many other social issues engendered by HPC, involving (for example) questions of access to HPC resources, the conditions under which HPC simulations can be trusted, whether the energy costs of HPC justify their benefits, and whether HPC offers novel ways to impart an understanding of complex systems. Issues such as these are genuinely interdisciplinary: They cannot be adequately addressed without input from experts inside and outside a traditional STEM sphere of influence. The goal of this symposium is to bring together researchers from diverse fields to present and discuss issues of mutual interest.
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News
Some recent things coming out of the Purdue Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence Lab
Spring 2024
