DR. SASHA LUCCIONI - Founding Member Climate Change AI - Climate Lead & AI Researcher - Hugging Face

DR. SASHA LUCCIONI - Founding Member Climate Change AI - Climate Lead & AI Researcher - Hugging Face

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Founding Member of Climate Change AI
AI Researcher & Climate Lead · Hugging Face

My work is really about figuring out how, right now, AI is using resources like energy and emitting greenhouse gases and how it's using our data without our consent. I feel that if we develop AI systems that are more respectful, ethical, and sustainable, we can help future generations so that AI will be less of a risk to society.  The way I got into this field was working on the environmentally beneficial applications of AI, and I do believe that that's an impactful way of using AI techniques because there's so much data about the climate, satellite data, and sensor data, and the way to go about this is to work with domain experts. AI is never going to solve the problem on its own, but it can be a tool. So I think that there's a lot of promise there.

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? - Highlights - DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

Does having too many choices make us unhappy? - Highlights - DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ

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Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ - Author of The Paradox of Choice & Why We Work

DR. BARRY SCHWARTZ - Author of The Paradox of Choice & Why We Work

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Psychologist · Author of Why We Work
The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

In 2004, the internet was just getting started in a major league way, and already the choice overload was a problem. I would say that from the modern perspective, 2004 seems like the 18th century, and as near as I can tell, all of these changes, every single one of them has made the problem substantially worse. The idea that you can get information to help guide you through - well, yeah, but what information do you believe? What's trustworthy? What's being motivated by an opportunity to sell you something? So there is a haze, there is this fog that we're operating in. And I think we just sort of give up in resignation and look at recommendations and hope that they're legitimate because how else do you get through the day?

Are we living in a Simulated Universe? - Highlights - MELVIN VOPSON

Are we living in a Simulated Universe? - Highlights - MELVIN VOPSON

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Physicist · Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe
Co-founder & CEO of the Information Physics Institute

These ideas go as far back as Ancient Greece, which basically gave birth to two lines of thinking, two ideologies, materialism and idealism. And the idealist thinkers like Plato regarded reality as a projection of our minds, as something that is not real. And the only thing that is real is our consciousness and our minds and everything else around us is just constructs of our proception and projections. And that was a philosophy that was opposed to materialism, which regards the world as in a materialistic way, made up of atoms and matter and our minds are a product of these chemical reactions and the matter is coming together and forming our minds and consciousness. And everything in the world exists regardless of our consciousness or our minds and the universe is there and it's a materialistic view of the world. So these are two competing ideologies, and this is actually how we see the world today in a materialistic way.

MELVIN VOPSON - Physicist - Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe

MELVIN VOPSON - Physicist - Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe

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Physicist · Author of Reality Reloaded: The Scientific Case for a Simulated Universe
Co-founder & CEO of the Information Physics Institute

These ideas go as far back as Ancient Greece, which basically gave birth to two lines of thinking, two ideologies, materialism and idealism. And the idealist thinkers like Plato regarded reality as a projection of our minds, as something that is not real. And the only thing that is real is our consciousness and our minds and everything else around us is just constructs of our proception and projections. And that was a philosophy that was opposed to materialism, which regards the world as in a materialistic way, made up of atoms and matter and our minds are a product of these chemical reactions and the matter is coming together and forming our minds and consciousness. And everything in the world exists regardless of our consciousness or our minds and the universe is there and it's a materialistic view of the world. So these are two competing ideologies, and this is actually how we see the world today in a materialistic way.

What distinguishes our consciousness from AI & machine learning? Highlights: LIAD MUDRIK - Neuroscientist, Tel Aviv University

What distinguishes our consciousness from AI & machine learning? Highlights: LIAD MUDRIK - Neuroscientist, Tel Aviv University

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Neuroscientist · Principal Investigator Liad Mudrik Lab · Tel Aviv University

So when I say that I am a conscious creature, I mean that I don't only analyze information about the world, or not only even respond to the world because you can think about, your thermostat response to the world, but when I sense the world, I don't only process information. I also have a qualitative experience, adopting Thomas Nagel's famous title of his paper. It feels like something in his case to be a bat. In our case, to be me. It feels like something to drink coffee, right? So the question is what allows us as human beings not only to process information but also to experience it? And this is what we are trying to understand, basically. And I should say, I said us as human beings, but I think that animals also have such conscious experience.

So to what extent does our cognition affect perception itself? And I belong to those researchers who think that it does. We are affected by what we expect to see. And sometimes we even perceive the expected as opposed to the world as it is. That also pertains to day-to-day life, to politics, to the reality you construct for yourself. So the brain is an amazing, amazing piece of machinery. And one of the things that it does best is to create these narratives. into which we project ourselves. So it creates a model of the world.

LIAD MUDRIK - Neuroscientist - Principal Investigator Liad Mudrik Lab, Tel Aviv University

LIAD MUDRIK - Neuroscientist - Principal Investigator Liad Mudrik Lab, Tel Aviv University

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Neuroscientist · Principal Investigator Liad Mudrik Lab · Tel Aviv University

So when I say that I am a conscious creature, I mean that I don't only analyze information about the world, or not only even respond to the world because you can think about, your thermostat response to the world, but when I sense the world, I don't only process information. I also have a qualitative experience, adopting Thomas Nagel's famous title of his paper. It feels like something in his case to be a bat. In our case, to be me. It feels like something to drink coffee, right? So the question is what allows us as human beings not only to process information but also to experience it? And this is what we are trying to understand, basically. And I should say, I said us as human beings, but I think that animals also have such conscious experience.

So to what extent does our cognition affect perception itself? And I belong to those researchers who think that it does. We are affected by what we expect to see. And sometimes we even perceive the expected as opposed to the world as it is. That also pertains to day-to-day life, to politics, to the reality you construct for yourself. So the brain is an amazing, amazing piece of machinery. And one of the things that it does best is to create these narratives. into which we project ourselves. So it creates a model of the world.

How is AI Changing Education, Work & the Way We Learn? - MICHAEL S. ROTH, President of Wesleyan University

How is AI Changing Education, Work & the Way We Learn? - MICHAEL S. ROTH, President of Wesleyan University

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President of Wesleyan University
Author of The Student: A Short History

So I wrote this book and it was a lot of fun because I had to learn so much. The book examines three iconic teachers: Confucius, Socrates, and Jesus. And I look at how each of those teachers encourage a certain kind of student. The student as follower, someone who will take on the path that you've developed. In the case of Socrates, the student as critical interlocutor or critical conversation partner, someone who will, in dialogue with you, learn what they don't know, how to take things apart. And in the case of Jesus and the apostles, I look at trying to imitate a way of life to transform themselves to strive towards being the kind of person that Jesus incarnated. And so that's the beginning of the book, these models of studenthood, if I could use that word, and being a teacher. And then I look at the way in which these ideas reverberate in the West across a long period of time. So I'm interested in the idea of the student before there were schools. What did we expect young people to learn even when they weren't going to school?

Highlights - MAX STOSSEL - Youth & Education Advisor, Center for Humane Technology, Award-winning Poet

Highlights - MAX STOSSEL - Youth & Education Advisor, Center for Humane Technology, Award-winning Poet

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Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker & Speaker
Creator of the Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move

Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.

It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing.

MAX STOSSEL - Youth & Education Advisor, Center for Humane Technology, Award-winning Poet

MAX STOSSEL - Youth & Education Advisor, Center for Humane Technology, Award-winning Poet

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Award-winning Poet, Filmmaker & Speaker
Creator of the Stand-Up Poetry Special Words That Move

Technology has very much changed the way we read and take in information and shortened it into quick bursts and attention spans. We're living in a new world, for sure. And how do we communicate in this new world? Not just in a way that gets the reach, because there are whole industries aimed at what do I do to get the most likes or the most attention, and all of that, which I don't think is very fulfilling as artists.

It's sort of a diminishing of our art form to try and play the game because then we're getting the attention and getting the hits, as opposed to what do I really want to create? How do I really want to create it? How do I want to display this? And can I do it in a way that breaks through so that if I do it my way, it's still going to get the attention, great. But if it doesn't, can I be cool with that? And can I be okay creating what I want to create, knowing that that's what it's about. It's about sharing in an honest, authentic way what I want to express without letting the tentacles of social media drip into my brain and take over why I'm literally doing the things that I'm doing.

Highlights - SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Fmr. Distinguished Scholar, US Library of Congress

Highlights - SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind, Fmr. Distinguished Scholar, US Library of Congress

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Founding Director · Center for the Future Mind · Florida Atlantic University
Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA · Fmr. Distinguished Scholar at US Library of Congress

So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.

SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Director, Center for the Future Mind, FAU, Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA

SUSAN SCHNEIDER - Director, Center for the Future Mind, FAU, Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA

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Founding Director · Center for the Future Mind · Florida Atlantic University
Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind
Fmr. NASA Chair at NASA · Fmr. Distinguished Scholar at US Library of Congress

So it's hard to tell exactly what the dangers are, but that's certainly one thing that we need to track that beings that are vastly intellectually superior to other beings may not respect the weaker beings, given our own past. It's really hard to tell exactly what will happen. The first concern I have is with surveillance capitalism in this country. The constant surveillance of us because the US is a surveillance capitalist economy, and it's the same elsewhere in the world, right? With Facebook and all these social media companies, things have just been going deeply wrong. And so it leads me to worry about how the future is going to play out. These tech companies aren't going to be doing the right thing for humanity. And this gets to my second worry, which is how's all this going to work for humans exactly? It's not clear where humans will even be needed in the future.