Artificial Intelligence: From Hype and Fear to Hope and Possibility - Jon Minton
Details
AI is older and stranger than ChatGPT, and the most interesting AI of the next decade probably will not come from its loudest names. This talk argues that the public conversation has been having the wrong argument — not about whether AI works, but about *which* AI works, who is building it, and what cheap cognition does to a world built around expensive expertise. Drawing on Polanyi, Kahneman, Harlow's monkeys and Iain M. Banks' Culture novels, with stops at agentic AI and an inherited library.
Jon Minton is a data scientist, statistician and Humanist based in Edinburgh, with a background spanning demography, sociology and software development. He shifted from disengaged AI sceptic to engaged participant in late 2025, prompted by the DeepMind documentary *The Thinking Game*, by Claude pushing back rather than agreeing, and by Claude Code's speed-up on tasks with verifiable outputs.
Please note that this is an online only meeting via Zoom. Once you RSVP, you will be provided with the link to the meeting. Just click on this link when it is time to join the meeting. You can also join the meeting using a Zoom account and the following details:
Meeting ID: 744 950 4423
Passcode: Humanists
We are arranging a "Humanist Pub Night" in the back room of The Kenilworth pub in Edinburgh on Wednesday 6 May from 7pm onwards to allow people to meet together informally and discuss these and other topics. See separate Edinburgh Humanists Meetup (https://www.meetup.com/edinburghhumanists/ ) for full details.