Ri Christmas Lecture Livestream
CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution "The Truth About AI"
Livestreams of the LECTURES at WMG
Image credit: Paul Wilkinson Photography
Dates and Times | What are the CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution? | What are this year's CHRISTMAS LECTURES about? | Who is the Speaker? | Get Involved
Dates, Times, and Info
When:
WMG will be hosting livestreams of two of the three CHRISTMAS LECTURES on:
Tuesday 12th December 2023
Thursday 14th December 2023
Arrive: 17:30
Live stream starts: 18:00
Latest finish: 20:30
Where:
WMG on the Warwick University Campus (CV4 7AL). The video feed will be broadcast to us to watch live in our auditorium.
REGISTER HERE
What are the CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution?
More information on the Ri CHRISTMAS LECTURES.
Initiated by Michael Faraday when organised education for children was scarce, the CHRISTMAS LECTURES established an exciting new way of presenting science to young people.
World-famous scientists have given the Lectures, including Nobel Prize winners William and Lawrence Bragg, Sir David Attenborough, Carl Sagan and Dame Nancy Rothwell.
The lectures are a fantastic and prestigious event and the highlight of the science calendar each year. However, only around 100 people can attend the theatre in person - so we have been given an exclusive opportunity to broadcast the lectures live as they happen in to the auditorium at WMG at the University of Warwick. There will be a live host with additional entertainment so this will be more than just another online event. This is an exciting opportunity to see the lectures as they are filmed for the BBC and before anyone else (except those in the theatre themselves!).
Think of it as a science movie premiere - and join us in the exclusive audience!
What are this year's CHRISTMAS LECTURES about?
Not since the World-Wide Web emerged 30 years ago has a new technology promised to change our world so fundamentally and so swiftly as AI does. Today’s AI tools such as ChatGPT and AlphaGo are just a hint of what is to come. The future of AI is going to be quite a journey, and the 2023 CHRISTMAS LECTURES to be broadcast on BBC Four and iPlayer in late December, will give us a guided tour.
AI has increasingly grabbed the headlines in recent years – generating excitement and concern in equal measure – but what should we believe? In these lectures Mike will reveal how AI works and how it will affect our lives – and will tackle head-on our hopes and fears for this most fascinating of fields.
Throughout the three Lectures, Mike will explore the big questions facing AI research and unravel the myths about how this ground-breaking technology really works. How can a machine be taught to play a game or translate from one language to another? He will show how computer programmes inspired by the human brain can be taught and even teach themselves. And he will tell the surprising story of how tools like the latest chatbots work and illustrate the mind-boggling scale of modern AI systems – that can be used in everything from gaming to movie-making to designing drugs.
When Alan Turing suggested the ‘Turing test’, to see if a computer’s responses to questions could be mistaken for a human’s, it seemed like a far-off, perhaps even impossible goal. We will play a high stakes ‘Turing test’ in the Ri Theatre, along with other exciting experiments from the AI frontier, to find out just how far we are from Turing’s dream.
Although we think of AI as something in the future, Mike will show us the role that AI already plays in our lives – without us even being aware of it. He will demonstrate the huge impact AI is having in fields ranging from medicine to football to astrophysics – and even our creative lives - in art, photography, and music.
Yet while AI will create many exciting opportunities, advances in the field have raised many fears – some justified, others not. There are concerns about identifying what’s fake and what’s real, as AI becomes increasingly clever. Mike will talk us through the dangers that AI raises, from machines adopting human prejudices, through to machines that operate as our boss at work, up to questions about whether AI might be a risk to humanity.
And finally, he’ll address the really big question of AI: can it ever truly be like us, or are humans unique?
Across the series Michael will be joined by some major figures from the AI world, including scientists from the world’s leading AI companies. He will also introduce a range of robot friends, who will demonstrate what robots today can do – and what they can’t. Perhaps he may even surprise the audience with some Deep Fake guests who are not quite what they seem.
Who is the Speaker?
Mike Wooldridge is an academic and author specialising in Artificial Intelligence (AI).
As an academic, he is a professor of AI at the University of Oxford, where he served as Head of Department of Computer Science from 2014 to 2021; he is also Director for AI at The Alan Turing Institute in London. He has received multiple awards for both research and education, including in 2020, the Lovelace Medal from the British Computer Society – the leading award for a UK computer scientist – and in 2021 the Outstanding Educator Award from the Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI).
From 2014-16, Mike was President of the European Association for AI, and from 2015-17 he was President of the International Joint Conference on AI (IJCAI). He is currently Editor-in-Chief of Artificial Intelligence, the leading journal for AI, established more than 50 years ago and has been invited to give evidence on matters relating to AI to multiple government committees.
As an author, he has written nine books, which have been translated nine times. His books include two popular science introductions to AI: the Ladybird Expert Guide to AI (Penguin, 2018) in the iconic British book series, and The Road to Conscious Machines (Pelican, 2020).
Mike gives frequent public lectures on AI, including at the Hay Festival and Cheltenham Science Festival and is regularly interviewed by the media.
Get Involved
WMG at the University of Warwick will be hosting two events with livestreams of the CHRISTMAS LECTURES from the Royal Institution on Tuesday 12th December and Thursday 14th December. We will have a 'first look' at the lecture before it is shown on TV. Alongside the livestreams we will also have opportunities to meet with our researchers, engineers, lecturers and scientists, and take part in fun scientific experiments to learn more about the subject. You will be part of a live audience for this event.
The lectures themselves will take place in the Royal Institution headquarters in London. They will provide livestream videos of the lectures to us, which we will show to the audience in the room. At certain points the staff at the Ri will need to pause the lecture to set up demonstrations or fix technical issues, during which times the outreach team at WMG will entertain you.
Warwick Staff and Students
Staff and Students at the University of Warwick can attend with their families. We will hold up to half of the tickets for each night and allocate them to staff on a first-come-first-served basis.
You can use this form to register your interest as a member of Warwick Staff.
There are still spaces available so please do sign up!
Local Community
We will hold up to half of the tickets for each night for members of the local community, and these will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.
The Lectures are advertised to an age range of 11-17 years old, but they are so well produced that they will appeal to an adult audience. As an outreach team our priority is to work with young people, so we are encouraging people with families to attend.
You can use this form to register your interest in attending as a member of the local community.
There are still spaces available so please do sign up!