Computing Society see Prof. Brian Cox

Students come face-to-face with AI.

Students within The Computing Society have just enjoyed their first outreach trip; we all travelled to London to see a Royal Society production of a lecture ‘You and AI’. The evening took place at the Barbican Hall and was presented by Professor Brian Cox. This unique presentation invited the audience to consider and question what challenges and opportunities AI (artificial intelligence) will present us within the next decade. The event brought together a panel of experts of AI who answered questions sent in by the audience which proved to be both interesting and insightful with some very thought provoking issues being raised – plus plenty of real world examples to illustrate how and what the changes are that AI is bringing and may bring – to our lives.

One example given was by Vivienne Ming, who quoted a recent event that took place at Columbia University where there was a competition between human lawyers and their artificial counterparts in which both read a series of non-disclosure agreements with deliberate loopholes in them. The AI found 95% of the loopholes, and the humans just 88%. However, the interesting aspect was that the human took 90 minutes to read and find them, whilst the AI took just 22 seconds! This indicates perfectly just how AI will cause labour market disruption, not just for factory jobs, but also for brain workers.

During the train journey home, we found ourselves discussing many of the topics raised in the lecture and it was interesting to compare opinions and thoughts with one another and whether we agreed with the Barbican panel. One thing is for sure, our world will see rapid technological change in the next 20 years and AI is here to stay. Thank you to all Year 13 Computer Scientists who went on the trip and entered into the spirit of the lecture.