Professor Mike Wooldridge, Fellow of AISB, Professor of AI at Oxford University and Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute in London will present the prestigious Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in December 2023. He will tackle the big questions facing AI research. He will illustrate the mind-boggling scale of modern AI systems, while showing us the role that AI already plays in our lives, without us even being aware of it. With today’s AI tools such as ChatGPT and AlphaGo being just a hint of what is to come, Mike will also discuss the ethical and societal questions that AI raises, from machines adopting human prejudices, through to machines that operate as our boss at work, to questions about whether AI might even be a risk to humanity. And finally, he’ll address the really big question of AI: can it ever truly be like us, or are humans unique?
AISB endorses free online session on the history and future of AI
As part of its mission to support the public understanding of Artificial Intelligence, AISB is endorsing the From thinking tools to AI session of the Digital thinking tools badged course. The session can be studied on its own or as part of the course any time, and it is free of charge. The course itself is badged by both the Open University and the Institute of Coding.
The session From thinking tools to AI is about the dream of thinking machines. It traces the history of this dream from medieval times through to the AI developments of the 21st century. It critically examines the idea that AI will make humans redundant and argues that focusing on AI supremacy runs the danger of ignoring the more immediate dangers arising from AI making decisions using opaque algorithms and biased data.
The topics of opaque algorithms, explainable Artificial Intelligence and the broader question of what it means for machines to think have under discussion at many symposia of the AISB’s annual convention. This year’s convention, which is currently being rescheduled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, includes several symposia on topics such as opacity in machine learning, responsibility and control, Do Robots Talk?, AI and Moral Learning, and AI and Robotics Normative Spheres.
The EU’s AI Strategy in the Press
Some interesting responses have been posted in the past week to the EU’s AI Strategy published on 19 February 2020. Now mainstream media take a position, too. Here is a reaction published by Fortune:
AISB @ Big Data & AI World
AISB Chairman Dr Bertie Müller will be chairing the Keynote Theatre on Day 1 of Big Data & AI World in March at the ExCeL Exhibition Centre in London. on Day 2 he will be part of a panel on Putting AI into Practice and also holding a keynote on responsible systems design.