HELD OCTOBER 24, 2023 — Watch the video below
Could AIs develop a sense of self and an inner world – and should this concern or excite us?
Join us for a live streamed conversation on Future of being Human … Unplugged between Mark Daley (University of Western Ontario), Blake Richards (McGill University), and host Andrew Maynard, as we explore the cutting edge of consciousness, artificial intelligence, and where current developments may be leading us.
Details
This event was broadcast on October 24, 2023 between 11:10 AM – 12:00 PM Pacific Time
Participants
Mark Daley
Mark is the Chief AI Officer at Western University, a full professor in the Department of Computer Science with cross-appointments in five other departments, including The Rotman Institute of Philosophy, and The Western Institute for Neuroscience. He is also a faculty affiliate of Toronto’s Vector Institute for Artificial Intelligence.
Mark has previously served as the Vice-President, Research at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research(CIFAR), and Associate Vice-President (Research) and Special Advisor to the President at Western.
Mark is the past chair of Compute Ontario and serves on a number of other boards.
Blake Richards
Blake Richards is an Associate Professor in the School of Computer Science and Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University and a Core Faculty Member at Mila.
Richards’ research is at the intersection of neuroscience and AI. His laboratory investigates universal principles of intelligence that apply to both natural and artificial agents. He has received several awards for his work, including the NSERC Arthur B. McDonald Fellowship in 2022, the Canadian Association for Neuroscience Young Investigator Award in 2019, and a Canada CIFAR AI Chair in 2018.
Richards was a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at SickKids Hospital from 2011 to 2013. He obtained his PhD in neuroscience from the University of Oxford in 2010 and his BSc in cognitive science and AI from the University of Toronto in 2004.
About The Future of Being Human … Unplugged
The Future of Being Human … Unplugged is a series of live streamed conversations that bring together experts and thinkers from very different backgrounds as they explore some of the more intriguing, complex, and profound implications of rapidly developing technological capabilities.
Unscripted, unpredictable, and threaded through with mischievously curiosity, Unplugged aims to push the bounds of how we think about the intersection between advanced technologies, cutting edge science, and the very essence of what it might mean to be human in the future.
And the “Unplugged” bit? We’re unplugging from the usual norms and expectations that so often make online discussions deadly tedious, so no interminable PowerPoint presentations, no long winded opening statements, and no impenetrable monologues – just compelling conversation that’ll make you think.
We’re also unplugging from conventional ideas and often-stifling disciplinary constraints as we explore futures that are anything but conventional.
In other words, expect conversations that engage, entertain, and shake up your world as we explore what it might mean to be human in a technologically complex future!