A Defence of Humanity in the Age of the Computer
4th May 2011; 13:00
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RSA Keynote
By mimicking our behaviour and conversation, computers have recently come within a single vote of passing the Turing Test, the widely accepted threshold at which a machine can be said to be 'thinking' or 'intelligent'.
This is a remarkable feat of human ingenuity, but what does it say about our humanity? Are we really no better at being human than the machines we've created?
Author and poet Brian Christian, who competed head to head with the world's leading AI programmes at the annual Turing Test competition, visits the RSA to explore the recent breathtaking advances in artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
These, he argues, offer a unique opportunity to rethink what it means to be human, and what it means to be intelligent in the 21st century.
Speaker: Brian Christian, author of The Most Human Human: a defence of humanity in the age of the computer (Viking, 2011).
Chair: Thomas Neumark, associate director, the Connected Communities project, RSA
Suggested hashtag for Twitter users: #RSAhuman
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