The Film-Phil Lisbon Seminars: Muhammad Haris

The next Film-Phil Lisbon Seminar will be led by Muhammad Haris (Habib University) who will talk about “Natural Language Generation and the Script for a Film on Genocide”. The session will be held exclusively online via Zoom on May 28, 2025, at 11:00 WEST / 13:00 EET. To receive information about joining the meeting online, it’s mandatory to register in advance here.

Abstract

In response to engineered prompts that reference Rithy Panh, Natural Language Generation (NLG) artificial intelligence programs “write” scripts for films about the genocide in Palestine, as it has unfolded in the post October 2023 period. At the first level of analysis, we are going to engage in speculative examination of the NLG generated film scripts, as potential ethnographic material emerging from a multitude of databases, from Rithy Panh’s cinematic oeuvre, films made by citizens and journalists of Gaza and the West Bank, and so many other sources. The phenomenon of the NLG generated script calls out for a broader theoretical analysis, however, the problem is that NLG is as yet a most under-theorized phenomenon. Driven by the aim to propose a philosophical framework for understanding NLG based AI programs’ production of reflexive scripts on an ongoing genocide, and borrowing inputs from Rithy Panh’s works, we are going to turn to the ideas of Noam Chomsky. On the one hand, NLG presents new challenges to the models and structures in the Chomskyan framework, such as, transformational grammar, deep structure, the minimalist model, and the propaganda model. On the other hand, examining NLG from the standpoint of Chomskyan formalism makes it possible to propose a philosophical framework that could in turn yield some theoretical understanding. It is at this point that we return to the NLG generated film scripts about genocide in Palestine, and present a summative analysis from the standpoint of “values”, including the value of NLG as instrument of production in the present.

Bio

Muhammad Haris is the Director for the Program in Comparative Humanities at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan. The program’s curriculum is grounded in cross-disciplinarity, cooperation, and a sense of urgency about the role of the humanities in the 21st century. Within this milieu, Haris has developed and taught courses that explore, evaluate, and model philosophy’s potential in the areas of critical inquiry, conceptual genealogies, comparative hermeneutics, environmental humanities, and digital humanities. He holds a PhD in Philosophy from Texas A&M University, USA.