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Past Event

What Are Our Brains For? Cognitive Enhancement, Artificial Intelligence and Human Nature

John Harris D.Phil., Lord Alliance Professor of Bioethics and Director, Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation, and Director, Wellcome Strategic Programme in the Human Body, its Scope, Limits and Future, University of Manchester

Astronomer Martin Rees has observed that there might be scientific facts that will never be discovered by beings with brains that have evolved in the way that human brains have so far developed, and scientific theories we are incapable of postulating. Related ethical limits might arise from our organic embodied nature and from the essential differences between human and artificial intelligence. More significant still, as Steven Hawking and Elon Musk have suggested, AI could pose problems that our brains are not adapted to anticipate. Join us as Harris examines the ethical and conceptual limits to human beings and human nature.

MLF Organizer
Wes McGaughey
Notes

MLF: LGBT

In association with California Pacific Medical Center's Program in Medicine & Human Values

November 17, 2015

The Commonwealth Club of California
555 Post St.
San Francisco, 94102
United States

Speakers

Speaker