In the second talk of the Critical AI 2024 seminar series, Dr. McKim considers recent advances in text to moving image generators, such as Open AI’s Sora, and questions the nature of the worlds they are generating. He asks:

1. How exactly do these models work?
2. What ability do they have to simulate complex physical processes?
3. Should we be sceptical of the AI industry’s claims that they are developing world simulators?

We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held in room CLO B01 of the Clore Management Centre and will be followed by a get-together with some refreshments.

In the first talk of the Critical AI 2024 seminar series, Dr. Grzankowski examines whether contemporary AI systems such as ChatGPT are thinking and reasoning or are mere mimics. He asks:

1. Is behaving like a thinker enough to be a thinker?
2. Aren’t large language models ‘just next word predictors’?
3. Can a large language model learn about the world just by studying language?

We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held in Room 206 of Birkbeck Central.

We begin our BIDA seminar series on "Critical Voices on AI" with Dan McQuillan, Lecturer in Creative & Social Computing at Goldmiths and author of the recently published book "Resisting AI". In his work, Dan systematically explores how the essentialising nature of AI systems fuels social divisions and, in its most extreme forms, the fascist politics of our times. He calls for us to resist AI in its current form and proposes new approaches to this technology grounded in mutual care.

We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held in room B01 of the Clore Management Center.

We continue our BIDA seminar series on "Critical Voices on AI" with Asmelash Teka Hagdu, fellow of the Distributed AI Research Institute and co-founder/CTO of Lesan.

We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held online.

In our third installment of our seminar series, we are joined by Sayash Kapoor, Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University's Center for Information Technology Policy. Sayash will talk about his most recent work that challenges the presumed accuracy of AI/ML systems in social settings:

“We are constantly surrounded by exciting headlines and bold claims about artificial intelligence (AI), making it difficult to critically assess the truth behind these statements. In this talk, we'll look at the reasons behind AI hype and explore practical ways to resist it. We will start with common pitfalls in journalism that lead to public confusion. Then, we’ll look at how non-reproducible research exaggerates AI claims. Finally, we will explore the strategies used by profit-driven companies to overstate AI technologies, ultimately shaping public perception.”

We encourage academics and students from all areas as well as interested laypeople to join us! The talk will be held online.