God AI: What to Expect when Machines Outsmart us with Toby Walsh and Simon Longstaff

Are we doomed? Is it game over for humanity?

Date: Thursday November 19th
Time: 6-8pm (doors open at 5.30pm, come early for a drink with a view over Avalon Beach)
Location: Avalon Beach Surf Club

Join us for an important conversation with Professor Toby Walsh and Dr Simon Longstaff about the ethics and impacts of our most dangerous invention, AI.

Our fears about artificial general intelligence go deep. They touch on our very identity as thinking, feeling creatures, and on our place in the universe. Are we creating our own successor? And might this creation be a god?

In this vital contribution, leading researcher and author Professor Toby Walsh explores the existential risks posed by our accelerating efforts to realise an AI-powered future. While AI models are leading to the development of wondrous technologies such as potentially life-saving drugs, they are also disrupting the lives of millions across the globe by rapidly reshaping our relationships with work and with one another. But there are also clear risks that powerful AI threatens our very existence as a species.

In an increasingly fractured world, what happens when AI hits the singularity and gains the ability to recursively self-improve? Could we so fully outsource our own thinking to AI that we make ourselves obsolete? Could machines become so intelligent that it is game over for humanity?

With his typical lucidity and humour, Walsh explores the issues, evaluates the dangers and considers what we can do to prevent AI harms before it is too late.

Toby Walsh is one of the world's leading researchers in artificial intelligence. He is a professor of artificial intelligence at the University of New South Wales and chief scientist at its AI institute, UNSW.ai. He is the author of five books about AI, including Machines Behaving Badly, Faking It and, most recently, The Shortest History of AI.

Dr Simon Longstaff is the Executive Director of The Ethics Centre, a leading independent non-profit organisation based in Sydney, Australia, dedicated to promoting ethics in public and professional life.