Cognition, Computation, and Culture: New Tools for Cultural Cybernetics

This seminar is in partnership with the Senator George J. Mitchell Institute for Global Peace, Security and Justice and will be presented by Dr. Justin Lane, CEO of Culture Pulse and Professor F. LeRon Shults from the University of Agder. The seminar will focus on the use of computational tools for modelling important aspects of human culture. It will also present several use cases for these methods related to the study of social stability and cohesion. From a methodological point of view, the seminar will focus on both social and belief networks and provide a basic overview of tools that can be useful for interdisciplinary approaches that employ both cognitive and anthropological perspectives. The seminar will also provide examples and basic defences of several methods within a larger framework. The presentation does not assume any understanding of computer programming. Rather, the goal will be to introduce scholars to new research possibilities within this area and what novel methods that might be appropriate for their future research questions.

Dr. Shults and Dr. Lane will explain how the information processing approach to human thought, ushered in during the last century by the cognitive turn in psychology, has resulted in great leaps in our ability to model human thought and behaviour. They will focus on the technique they call Multi-Agent Artificial Intelligence (MAAI), a form of socially-focused AI modelling. They posit that promoting an information processing approach to culture that intimately embraces and integrates computational models can advance the current theoretical and methodological limitations of the field. Blurring the boundaries between the cognitive and social sciences, they offer a new framework called “cultural cybernetics”. Within this framework, critical aspects of culture (including religious conflict and identity) can be better understood and perhaps even predicted.

Dr. Justin E. Lane is currently the CEO at CulturePulse AI, a US-Slovak AI company focused on the creation and analysis of social AI and digital twin technology, and co-founder at ALAN Analytics, s.r.o, a Slovak-based IP holdings company. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford, where he studied how information informs social cohesion and created and validated an AI system for predicting and analyzing digital twins of social groups. He has held positions at universities in the US, UK, Czech Republic and Singapore and is currently a Researcher at the Slovak Academy of Science and Scientific Director at the DEKK Institute in Bratislava. His work has been discussed in the BBC, The New York Times, Vice News, New Scientist, The Atlantic, and Joe Rogan Experience. He has regularly worked in business development and innovation consulting for start-up and investment firms in Central and Eastern Europe, helping them obtain over EUR80m in funding since 2020. His book, Understanding Religion through Artificial Intelligence: Bonding and Belief, is available through Bloomsbury

LeRon is the co-founder and CRO of CulturePulse. He is a professor at the Institute for Global Development and Planning and a founding member of the Center for Artificial Intelligence Research at the University of Agder, and also holds a position as a research professor at the NORCE Center for Modeling Social Systems in Kristiansand, Norway. LeRon has doctorates in educational psychology (Walden) and philosophy of religion (Princeton). He has published 19 books and 150 academic articles and book chapters on a wide range of topics such as social simulation, cognitive science, and metaphysics. LeRon loves long philosophical discussions and ice bathing, but not necessarily at the same time.