CSES/ARU Christmas Lecture : The Atomic Human

We are delighted to invite you to join us again at ARU for our annual Christmas Lectures. Now in its third year, we offer this event, FREE OF CHARGE, to every secondary school in Essex. The series has already welcomed well over a thousand students as renowned experts in their fields have shared their knowledge of their chosen areas in science and engineering! We hope that this year you will bring your students along as Professor Neil Lawrence introduces us to the world of Artificial Intelligence.

It seems that wherever we look, on TV, on the internet, or in newspapers, people are telling us how they are using AI to give us better experiences but are they? What does that mean? Is it safe? Should we be concerned?

Artificial Intelligence refers to the ability of machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. This includes capabilities like learning, problem-solving, decision-making, and perception but, as generative AI reshapes the technology landscape, we face fundamental questions about human-machine interaction.

In this talk Professor Lawrence will talk about the limitations of artificial intelligence, why he finds the notion of artificial general intelligence absurd, and how there’s a part of us that can never be replaced by the machine.

Neil Lawrence is the inaugural DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge where he leads the University’s flagship mission on Artificial Intelligence, AI@Cam. He has been working on machine learning models for over 20 years. He recently returned to academia after three years as Director of Machine Learning at Amazon.

His main interest is the interaction of machine learning with the real world. This interest was triggered by deploying machine learning in the African context, where ‘end-to-end’ solutions are normally required. This has inspired new research directions at the interface of machine learning and systems research, this work is funded by a Senior AI Fellowship from the Alan Turing Institute.

Neil is also visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield and the co-host of Talking Machines. He is the author of the book The Atomic Human.

To register your interest please contact nigel.stephens@cses.org.uk stating how many students you would like to bring and whether you have a preference for the AM or PM session or if you could attend either session.

We understand that, for some schools travelling longer distances, the timings for the event can make lunch provision difficult. If this is an issue for you please let us know and we will talk to the Catering Dept at ARU to see if they can accommodate your students in their food hall. Please note though that ARU is a cash free campus and that all food and drink would need to be paid for by a card or app.