AI, Mind and Society ("AIMS") Group

Technological innovations of the 21st Century continue to raise societal challenges that require a focused and interdisciplinary effort. AI is already beginning to change the world - consider the algorithms that decide what ads you see on social media, or the chatbots that infiltrate comments sections to change the direction of a conversation, or the possibility of AI piloted military weaponry, or the deep-learning algorithms gathering data on facial recognition in your phone. In the future, artificial intelligences will continue to increase in complexity and competence, perhaps eventually even outperforming humans in every domain.

What awaits us in our technological future? Is the emergence of AI a threat to humanity? Would a sufficiently intelligent and autonomous AI system be conscious? Will an artificial system ever be able to mimic the biological brain? What can we learn about our own society by looking at the trajectory of the AI technology we are building? How can this knowledge be applied so that our scientific and technological advancements can be put toward the betterment of society?