Artificial Intelligence and You: The Future of the Mind

It’s 2040, and you stroll into the Center for Mind Design where you can buy a variety of brain enhancements. How far do you want to go? The human calculator promises to give you savant-level mathematical abilities. The Zen garden can make you calmer and more efficient. Or you can buy “merge,” a series of enhancements that allow you to gradually augment and transfer mental functions to the cloud.

This might all sound like science fiction, but Susan Schneider, a cognitive scientist and philosopher at the University of Connecticut and the NASA–Blumberg chair of astrobiology at the Library of Congress, says brain microchips and other techniques to integrate humans with artificial intelligence are under development. AI, she says, is revolutionizing the economy and will inevitably go inside the head as corporations attempt to allow us seamless access to our devices.

Schneider addresses the implications of AI in our lives and how to ensure the science develops in a way that promotes human flourishing.

MLF ORGANIZER

Gerald Harris

NOTES

MLF: Technology & Society 

Speakers
Image - Schneider

Susan Schneider, Ph.D.

Author, Artificial You: AI and the Future of the Mind; NASA–Blumberg Chair in Astrobiology; NASA Distinguished Scholar, Library of Congress; Director of AI, Mind and Society Group, the University of Connecticut

Image - Epstein

Joe Epstein

Past Chair, Commonwealth Club Board of Governors—Moderator