This event is free for New Scientist subscribers.
The road to conscious machines: AI from Eliza to ChatGPT and beyond
Michael Wooldridge
The ultimate dream of artificial intelligence is to build machines that are like us: conscious and self-aware. While this remains a remote possibility, rapid progress on AI in this century is already profoundly changing our world. Yet the public debate and media hype is still largely centred on unlikely prospects from sentient machines to dystopian robot takeovers.
In this talk, Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of Oxford Michael Wooldridge, will bring a healthy injection of humility to an overhyped field and changes the prevailing narrative on AI. He will reveal how these anxieties distract us from the more immediate risks that this transformative technology poses – from algorithmic bias to fake news. He will also show us how they overlook the true life-changing potential of the field he loves.
Michael Wooldridge is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of Oxford, and a programme director for AI at the Alan Turing Institute. He has been an AI researcher for more than 30 years and has published more than 400 scientific articles on the subject, including nine books. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI), and the European Association for AI (EurAI). From 2014-16, he was President of the European Association for AI, and from 2015-17 he was President of the International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI). He is the author of two popular science books on AI: the Ladybird book on AI (2018), and The Road to Conscious Machines (Pelican, 2020).
What's included in your ticket:
- Live lecture lasting 60 minutes including Q&A with Michael Wooldridge
- On-demand access to a recording of the lecture and Q&A for 12 months
Event Information
This online event will start at 18.00 UK time on 12 March 2024 and will last for approximately one hour. Access to a recording of the event will be exclusively available to ticket purchasers for the 12 months following the live event. The on-demand recording will be available to view within 24 hours of the live discussion. Eventbrite will email you a confirmation immediately after purchase. You will also receive a separate email from our virtual events platform, with a link to access the event auditorium prior to the event; please note that each link is unique and should not be shared. The event auditorium will also provide access to the other items included in your ticket. Tickets are non-transferable to any other New Scientist event. All tickets are non-refundable.New Scientist reserves the right to alter the event and its line-up, or cancel the event. In the unlikely event of cancellation, all tickets will be fully refunded. New Scientist Ltd will not be liable for any additional expenses incurred by ticket holders in relation to the event. Tickets are subject to availability and are only available in advance through Eventbrite. To secure your place we recommend you book in advance.