American Scholar Prof Walter N Hakala Delivers Lecture At SMIU

American Scholar Professor Walter N Hakala has said that shifts in communication technologies have typically involved secondary or derivative use for a primary system handwritten marks on surfaces serve as analogues for speech print technologies that frequently replicate elements used in manuscripts

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 14th Dec, 2023) American Scholar Professor Walter N Hakala has said that shifts in communication technologies have typically involved secondary or derivative use for a Primary system handwritten marks on surfaces serve as analogues for speech print technologies that frequently replicate elements used in manuscripts.

The most recent technological change with which we are now confronted is that associated with large language models, currently accessible through veners such as microsoft Bing, Google, and ChatGPT.

He said this while delivering a lecture on "The Brass Boatman Eearly Instances of Artificial Intelligence in South Asian Literature" here at Sindh Madressatul islam University (SMIU) on Thursday. The lecture program was organized by the English Department of the varsity for its students and faculty members.

Prof. Walter who is an Associate Professor Director of Undergraduate Studies at the English Department of the College of Arts and Sciences University of Buffalo the State University of New York talked on old and new technologies with reference to classical South Asian literature.

He said many scholars now pursuing "Sound Studies" are considering how South Asians made sense of the disembodied voices that emanated from gramophone radios and other sound technologies. He was of the view that growing din from machines in both urban and agricultural settings had dramatic and seemingly irreversible effects on South Asian soundscapes.

Adding to it Prof. Walter said urdu translations of "The Third Dervish's Tale" from the Arabian Nights feature as brass boatman sometimes depicted with talismans inscribed on his chest who conveys a hapless hero across the sea.

Tracing the history of Asian literature he said Urdu lexicographer Syed Ahmad Dehlavi in his 1895 textbook on the origins of language compares the articulate human tongue to the operations of a mechanical doll modeled on the ubiquitous wind-up toys imported from Augsburg.

I first came to be interested in depictions of articulate automata last summer while I was engaged in translating an essay in Urdu on "The Initial Intermediate and Final Language of Mankind" which was first published as a pamphlet in 1895 and again in 1900 by the lexicographer Sayyid Ahmad Dihlavi (1846-1918) Professor Walter said and added that it would subsequently be included in the introduction of his celebrated four-volume Urdu dictionary the Farhang-e Asefiyah (published in 1908 with a second edition appearing in 1918) In this idiosyncratic and rambling treatise the author attempts to advance a universal history of language by introducing a theory of the origin and development of language.

He was of the view that Sayyid Ahmad makes several references in the treatise to recent technologies to explain the cognitive mechanisms of language and the various organs of speech including photography the telephone gramophone and two phrases that have given me a great deal of trouble which I have translated as a wind-up toy (kal ki putli literally a ‘mechanical doll) and intelligence incarnate (or clever aql ka putla though it idiomatically denotes a skill.

The second part of the compound putraka meaning puppet or pupil of the eye (possibly etymologically related to the English word pupil) is cognate with the putla and putli in his lecture Prof.

Walter said the first Urdu edition Tarjumah Alf Lailah ki was prepared between 1840 and 1842 by Munshi Abd al-Karim and lithographed in 1847 and 1852.

However, the "original" text that Abd al-Karim translated was not in Arabic instead he used Edward Forster's English edition as the source for his Urdu translation. Forster's translation originally published in 1802 and later revised by G.Moir Bussey in several editions was translated from Antoine Galland's renowned French translation.

The first two volumes of Galland's translation, which include the story of the third qalandar were first published in 1704 Abd al-Karim's Urdu translation was adapted in several subsequent editions partly due to its favorable reception.

Talking on artificial intelligence (AI) he said that AI is not a reliable source of a language to get the correct meaning from it but users have to verify its version by human wisdom.

He was of the opinion that sometimes AI lies but we have to trust it but must verify the things made through AI by using human judgment.

He said the present-day generation has to use AI but they must verify its results During his lecture he demonstrated writing a biography of a person which was wrongly written by AI.

SMIU’s Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Mujeeb Sahrai in his concluding speech appreciated Prof. Walter for his lecture and termed it wonderful and an eye-opener especially about AI.

Dr. Sahrai said today's generation is living in the 21st century and encounters realities and rationale of the new world dominated by AI but he remarked we are Ashraful Makhlooqat and human beings possesses wisdom ideology feelings dynamic approach and thinking toward life and the world, which matters a lot.

Earlier Dr. Riaz Mangrio chairman of the Department of English of SMIU welcomed the guest. Dean Dr Jamshed Adil Halepoto of SMIU presented a vote of thanks, while Wafa Mansoor Buriro, Assistant Professor and coordinator of the English Department conducted the proceedings in the end students of SMIU asked some pertinent questions to the guest about Artificial Intelligence.

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