The Imitation Game: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Position

The Imitation Game: Artificial Intelligence and the Human Position

July 7-12, 2024

REGISTER NOW

Artificial intelligence (AI) has moved out of the realm of science fiction to become a pervasive element of modern life. From digital home assistants to self-driving cars and chatbot customer service agents, AI is not just transforming the lives of early adopters—it is affecting everyone.

Businesses are swiftly adopting a host of AI tools to optimize their processes, reduce labor costs, and increase profits. Governments are not far behind, as federal agencies are already integrating AI into nearly every function, from increased surveillance by facial recognition technology to analysis of regulatory policy proposal comments via natural language processing. Educational institutions, too, are grappling with AI’s ubiquity. Beyond growing academic integrity concerns posed by widely accessible generative AI models, like ChatGPT, predictive modeling facilitated by AI has shown early promise as a way to improve student learning and outcomes by identifying students who would benefit from additional services.

With rapid advancements in hardware and software capabilities, along with a proliferation of large data sets to fuel complex machine learning algorithms, questions invariably arise about the capacity for AI to perform functions previously believed to be solely in the human domain. Philosophers and scientists alike have been considering this possibility for longer than we might expect. In the 17th century, René Descartes famously made the distinction between humans and automata based on the duality of body and mind, and more than 300 years later, British mathematician Alan Turing proposed a method to assess a machine’s ability to exhibit human behavior.

Comforting refrains such as, computers are only as intelligent as the people who program them, may have carried some weight in the past, but, as we build systems capable of unsupervised learning, it is easy to imagine a scenario where AI outpaces human capacities and begins to act autonomously. In fact, some futurists have predicted this exact outcome as soon as later this decade. In this Alumni College program, we will explore the current state of AI and consider the likely futures for this technology and its possible impact on humanity.

Professors Paul Gregory (Philosophy), Simon Levy (Computer Science) and Jeff Schatten (Business Administration) will be joined by other experts to lead our summer program. We are excited to bring together the disciplines of cognitive science, economics, philosophy, and information technology in a timely conversation about AI and how it will affect you. No prior knowledge of AI is required for this program, but there will be a test to verify you are human.

Program Cost: $900 per person
On-Campus Housing in Semi-Private Townhouse or Apartment: $125 per person