Posted: 15/05/17
ADAPT academic collaborator, Dr Luca Longo, opened the show at the prestigious TEDx Vicenza 2017. His presentation on “Can machines think?” stems from his innovative research on Artificial Intelligence (AI). The sold out event saw more than 1000 spectators attend the third edition of TEDxVicenza, with a futher 5000 people following the live stream on the TEDxVicenza website. Social media was alive with chatter from the event as #TEDxVicenza began trending.
In essence Dr Longo started his contribution with the famous question proposed by Alan Turing: “can machines think?”. It then briefly described the state of the art in Artificial Intelligence and presented a future time line mentioning the ‘technological singularity” concept introduced some years ago by Ray Kurzweil. He then continued with future predictions of technological events within the next 28 years.
The talk also covered contemporary and ethical issues around the field of Artificial Intelligence. To conclude Dr Longo introduced a provocative 10th objection, following the 9 objections proposed by the renowned Computer Scientist Alan Turing’s to his own Turing Test.
This provocation is: “If it is true we will be able to transfer human intelligence to machines, and they will become more intelligent than us, it is also true that we have let them become more intelligent. An absurdum.”
Dr Luca Longo is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computing at Dublin Institute of Technology and member of the ADAPT Centre for Digital Content Technology. Luca’s research focus is on Cognitive Load modelling employing novel deductive inference techniques (Defeasible reasoning + Argumentation Theory) and inductive Machine Learning computational techniques. Application fields include HCI, Education, Medicine and Universal Design.
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