The Catholic Union will be hosting an online talk with Jen Copestake and Fr Hugh MacKenzie on the future human and ethical challenges of Artificial Intelligence.
The event will take place on Tuesday 4 August at 7.00pm via the video-conferencing platform, Zoom. Joining details below:
Meeting ID: 488 624 6419
Passcode: 1wAEYa
Please sign in from 6.45pm to help ensure a prompt start.
A recording of the talk can be found here.
Artificial intelligence has been developed to improve our lives in many ways. Algorithms powered by vast quantities of data now influence our daily life and decisions, often with little human oversight. Some see these developments as leading to an age where human intelligence could be matched by machines.
Jen Copestake and Fr Hugh MacKenzie discuss whether these developments will ultimately have an impact on what it means to be human and whether these robots will be capable of replicating or producing their own complex human emotions? Is the concept of the human soul changing radically as more realistic and human-like robots are developed? Will these machines be capable of love and will we love them?
Fr Hugh MacKenzie is completing a PhD on Plato’s proof of the immortal soul, with Post-Graduate Studies in Artificial Intelligence in Edinburgh and Philosophy in Rome. He was Epistemology lecturer in Allen Hall Seminary, and an editor at Faith Magazine. He is currently Chaplain at the Hospital of St John and St Elizabeth and at Westminster Cathedral.
Jen Copestake is a presenter and reporter with the BBC’s global technology TV programme Click. She specialises in reports on the future of work, automation, artificial intelligence and ethics. Jen contributes to meetings on the future of technology and humanity at the Pontifical Academy for Life in Rome and recently spoke at the Vatican about a film she made in Rwanda on the use of artificial intelligence to triage patients.
We hope you can join us for what should be a very interesting and timely discussion.
Image: The Robots of Dawn, Bantam Books – book cover for the 1983 Isaac Asimov science fiction novel.
A recording of the talk can be found here.