Join BAFTA award winning documentary filmmaker Sheila Hayman in conversation with John Naughton

Are we on the verge of computers cleverer than any human, in every way; what’s sometimes called ‘Artificial General Intelligence’?

To teach a computer to recognise ‘cat’, you have to feed it millions of lines of code, turned into images of cats, doing all the wacky things cats do. A human toddler only needs to encounter two or three cats, and she’ll recognise any cat, in any situation, as a cat – forever.

Our brain, the most complex structure in the known universe, runs on about fifteen watts of completely renewable energy. And unlike a computer, we don’t need more energy to learn new things.

A narrative is developing that automation and ‘progress’ are one and the same. Is this leading us up the wrong path? In doing so, are we ignoring the many other kinds of progress we urgently need, to avoid epidemic mental and physical illness, and a fried planet?

At this event, Sheila Hayman will explain why disaster is not inevitable: we just need a new understanding of intelligence. One that values the human and the artificial for what each is good at, and helps humans flourish.

Trying to give computers human intelligence is – Senseless.

Full details here