Faith & Reason Lecture: Artificial Intelligence with Dr. Michael Ryall

Artificial intelligence is an exciting and very active area of research in computer science. Many describe the goal of this line of work to be the creation of machines with “human-like” intelligence. Popular culture leaves us with many images of what success might look like, from the killer soldier robots in The Terminator, to the oppressed robots of Blade Runner, to the special agents in The Matrix, to the idyllic companion in Her. Unfortunately (or not, depending upon your perspective), none of these scenarios will materialize any time soon-contrary to media hype, machines exhibiting truly human-like intelligence are still way off in the distant future.
Nevertheless, we have entered the Age of AI. This technology may not be up to creating the kinds of the beings imagined in science fiction movies, but it is powerful, it is omnipresent, and it is exerting a massive influence on the affairs of humans. Is this influence good or bad? In this talk, Dr. Ryall will explore the answer to that question from an Aristotelian/Thomistic perspective of human flourishing: do these technologies make us more or less human?