HUMAN VS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE

Before the development of the modern computer, a computer was simply seen as a device or role of calculating information. Even up through the second World War, computers were taking in information rapidly and allowing humans to make powerful, informed decisions. But there wasn’t an inherent conversation about intelligence, per say. The development of the modern computer brought forth the idea that the human brain is analogous to a computer. This ethos set goals for artificial systems that can make decisions for us, become our personal assistants, play games against us, and understand vast arrays of inputs while combine them with complex memory systems. A lot of these developments essentially make the artificial intelligence “more human”.

As artificial and machine intelligence has advanced at a rapid rate, the topic has expanded from a mostly technical conversation, what we can do with machine/artificial, to one of societal and ethical importance, what we should do when making artificially intelligent systems or what should an artificially intelligent system be capable of. There are fears about machine intelligence making humans redundant or greatly affecting how we communicate and interact with each other. While we have terms such as cognitive systems and machine intelligence, how relevant is our understanding of human intelligence to the current field? Is human intelligence still a good benchmark to use?

This panel will be a discussion on the goals and practice of machine intelligence and how we measure its progress, especially against human intelligence.

We are delighted to have Dr Martin Dinov (Maaind: http://www.martindinov.com/) and Sarah Aliko (https://www.ucl.ac.uk/pals/research/experimental-psychology/person/sarah-aliko/) join us.