Artificial Intelligence: artifice or intelligence, master or slave, useful tool or danger?
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a term that has been bandied about since the Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956. It has been used to describe many aspects of advanced computing, from noughts and crosses playing to chess and go, from search techniques to theorem proving, from logic-based systems to trainable neural networks, from natural language processing to computer vision. In the last 67 years, huge strides have been made in electronics, leading to enormous increases increase in power of computers, computer communications, and the generation of huge datasets that can be used to train systems. Now we can create systems that can interpret questions and provide meaningful answers. Simultaneously, great strides have been made in understanding the low-level operation of animal brains, but not yet in understanding how this underlies human intelligence. Will the two come together?
This brief talk cannot cover many of these areas! Instead, I try to provide some context, to consider what is meant by AI now, what the important recent advances have been, and (briefly) where we might be headed.
We are still experimenting with after-talk refreshments. Bring your own mug if you wish or use one of the Centre's if this is acceptable. We shall try a different method of amplification than before for the hard-of-hearing.
Please let me know if you hope to attend. This helps the Centre's staff judge numbers for seating.
Peter Griffiths' contact details are: email pvgriffiths@icloud.com or phone 01786 823974.