Scientific Controversies No. 20: Minds and Machines

Join Prof. Janna Levin, Prof. Gary Marcus, and Dr. Cathy O’Neil as they ponder if machines will acquire minds and if our minds are machines.

Humans aspire to build machines that think—machines with minds. The mindless algorithms that currently control and influence so much of contemporary life are far from thinking, sentient beings. Still, there has been a tremendous amount of fear mongering of late surrounding the existential threat of an Artificial Intelligence evolving from these mindless algorithms. Prof. Gary Marcus calls the hysteria into question and suggests a path forward to a safe AI that improves our lives. Always provocative, Dr. Cathy O’Neil, reminds us that even the seemingly mindless algorithms of today are embedded with our values. And not everyone’s values are inherently for the greater good. What are the implications of an AI evolved from algorithms intended to satiate the greed of the few? She challenges mathematicians and computer scientists to acknowledge the potential for big data, algorithms, and AI to increase inequality and cause math destruction.

Our Director of Sciences, Janna Levin, invites the cognitive scientist Prof. Gary Marcus and mathematician Dr. Cathy O’Neil to ponder if machines will acquire minds and if our minds are machines. Special guests, Annie Duke, Prof. Daniel Kahneman, and Prof. Pedro Domingos will join later in the evening.

Join us after the conversation for a book signing of Gary Marcus’ Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust and Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction, and for stargazing with the Amateur Astronomers Association of NY in our garden.