Where are all the robots? AI fact, fiction and future

Guernsey: Wednesday 22nd June 7.30pm, Les Cotils

Jersey: Thursday 23rd June 8pm, Pomme D’Or Hotel

Book Here

So here we are in the twenty-first century, but where are all the robots? Artificial Intelligence has delivered much, but promises even more. How can we tell the promise from the hype, the fact from the fiction? Science fiction has shown us intriguing “artificial people”, and these stories illustrate many important issues for a future world of AI, but present-day AI is nothing like that. Attempts to create intelligent software have produced many useful techniques, now used in modern IT systems; this has not created artificial people, but could it? In this lecture I’ll trace the history of AI in very broad outline, and highlight issues with examples from science fiction. I’ll finish with some recent work in neuroscience, and the resulting new theory of mind, which could, in the future, lead to genuinely intelligent machines, and I’ll conclude with some cautionary recommendations.

Tom Khabaza is a data scientist and AI practitioner and lecturer. He’s been in the field of AI for over 40 years, and in data science for 30. Tom’s interests range from the practical – how can we get better value from our data? – to the philosophical – what would it mean to build a conscious machine? Tom’s thought leadership in the 9 Laws of Data Mining led to his description as “the Isaac Newton of Data Mining”.