CAH: Artificial Intelligence: Destroyer or Savior?

CONCORD AREA HUMANISTS (CAH)
presents
Artificial Intelligence: Destroyer or Savior?

Wednesday, Jan. 9, 2019, 7:00 – 8:45 pm
First Parish in Concord, 20 Lexington Rd.

Artificial Intelligence will inevitably surpass human intelligence, eventually evolving its own software “DNA”

• Should we fear AI?
• What will happen when software starts writing itself?
• Will AI replace humans as the dominant species on Earth?

Join us January 9 for a lively open discussion, starting with an informal debate between two experts:

Carl Feynman, computer scientist and author

AI can be much more intelligent than people, and thus far superior at most activities, in the way we’re better than worms at almost anything. It is perfectly possible to create AI that doesn’t care about people, in which case it may well destroy everything we value. On the other hand, if we are careful in how we build it, AI could deliver a world that is vastly better than the present day. The choice of consequence—of heaven or extermination—may well be made within our lifetimes.

Terry Riopka, researcher in Deep Learning
As a product of humanity, artificially intelligent machines (AIs) will be more similar to humans than we think. In the end they will inevitably ask the same questions: what are we? Why are we here? What is the true nature of Reality? Self-aware or “conscious” AIs, if and when they do appear, will not be harbingers of destruction, but our key to understanding the Universe.