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On May 27 and 28, the University of Pavia and the Almo Collegio Borromeo hosted the launch event for GENERIC, a research project funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research’s FIS program. Directed by Professor Federico Faroldi, the project is based at the University of Pavia’s CERNAI Center (Center for Reasoning, Normativity, and Artificial Intelligence). The initiative brought together scholars from some of the most prestigious European and international universities to address a question crucial to understanding both human cognition and emerging technologies: how do we reason when formulating general statements about the world, and what are the implications of these generalizations for knowledge transmission, decision-making, and the law?

The event featured prominent figures in international research. Key speakers included philosopher Bernhard Nickel (Harvard University), a leading expert on generalizations in language and reasoning; Giovanni Sartor (University of Bologna), an internationally renowned authority on law, logic, and artificial intelligence; Stefano Colloca (University of Pavia), an expert in analogical reasoning in law; and James Kirkpatrick (University of Oxford), who discussed generic reasoning and “default” inferences in Large Language Models (LLMs)—the core systems driving today’s most widely used generative AI applications.

Central to the two-day discussion was the relationship between human reasoning and artificial intelligence. While contemporary language models exhibit striking capabilities in generating plausible responses, how they construct generalizations, handle exceptions, and make decisions under uncertainty remains an open question. Consequently, the study of generic reasoning serves as a cornerstone for developing more transparent, reliable AI systems capable of navigating the complexities of the real world.

Video recordings of the presentations will be available soon on our YouTube channel.