Salisbury — May 30th 2023

'Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks such as pandemics and nuclear war.' This statement, signed by leaders in the field, including the heads of OpenAI and Google Deepmind, shows how apposite was the in-depth presentation given by Euan on Tuesday.

His illustrated in-depth talk took us from the earlier work in the fields of philosophy, mathematics and physics by Descartes, Ryle, Turing and Heisenberg up to the more modern contributions by Feynman and the development of computer programs by the likes of Stephen Wolfram, whose eponymous language provides an algebraic computer system with the capacity to embed sounds and images, and so can be applied to object tracking such as cars or people. The work of Lance Eliot, an expert on Artificial Intelligence, and the impact of the increasing availability and potential use and abuse of ChatGPT were discussed.

AI systems are already being widely used in a number of medical fields, improving diagnoses in X-ray and tumour imaging, while examples of the fusion of images that can be created by the new AI system DALL.E2 were shown, such as a koala bear riding a motorcycle.

The work of Susie Alegre, a barrister whose book Freedom To Think, a discussion on the impact of AI on human rights, concluded the talk, one which made us more aware of the potential benefits from the many advances in AI - but also made us increasingly and uncomfortably aware of the dangers that we could face from an intelligence potentially capable of exceeding our own.

Comments

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Brian Tapper said…

At first I thought that AI was just the machines and robots that are seen in car making and some factories, I should have realised there had to be a lot of programming to get them to do the work.

Euan’s presentation very carefully explained the process and ethics involved with AI thinking for itself, “Euan usually does a good presentation” and he was not put off by the singing from the kitchen area.

i liked the new room Barry had arranged at The Chapter House.
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