Cambridge Festival of Ideas debates pressing questions about new technology

Computers have the potential to interact with us as like-minded entities, which could improve our daily lives in many ways. But these opportunities raise similar ethical questions encountered in the early 20th century. Researchers from the Psychometrics Centre at the University of Cambridge will discuss technology, ethics and our future in Artificial ‘un-intelligence’: the future we do not want may already be here. Just as past horrors of eugenics and excesses of war have shaped ethical frameworks for medicine and biological technologies, this event questions what new safeguards are necessary to ensure that artificial intelligence develops to benefit humankind.

Professor John Rust from the Psychometrics Centre said, “We have already demonstrated that computers can carry out psychological assessment in real time and that they can be better at this than humans.  However, the psychometric analysis of online digital traces, such as Facebook ‘likes’, could hold dangers if we dash into it too quickly.

“Once computer software is able to carry out psychological assessment, it can work out not just our location, but also our personality, IQ, interests, hopes, feelings, etc.  This can be really useful, and is already being used in online marketing and security settings, with potential applications in the Internet of Things. However, although a computer will one day be smarter than humans in predicting what a person may feel or do, it may not be conscious.  My main point is that it doesn’t need to be this way. The day when computers can behave ‘as if’ they had a mind is already here. On the one hand we have helpful robots; on the other hand we have military drones.”

Issues of privacy in today’s technology-dependent society are examined in Privacy in the digital age by Dr Natasa Milic-Frayling, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research, who believes the answers to these issues is to create a ‘digital estate’. The latest security and privacy protection through personalisation, user profiling, optimisation, and socialisation will need a legal and societal framework "that empowers rather than enslaves individuals”.

In Human–machine interaction: perfect love affair or imperfect marriage? Dr Rachel Jones discusses how interactive design empowers or disempowers our relationship with technology and our ability to handle everyday things, such as driverless cars and drones.

Dr Jones, an independent Strategic Designer, Innovation Associate for Innovate UK and Professor of Design at Nottingham Trent University, said: “Machines are gaining greater autonomy. Machine learning is being applied extensively to online data, and so personal decisions such as what book we might read next are being made on our behalf. Many welcome this as the ultimate ease of use, but others have concerns. Will driverless cars really be safer? Will we become locked into a certain worldview? We need to ensure that people retain the control they want and need.”

Another event focuses on how new forms of resistance, grounded in technological change, are emerging at a pace faster than regimes can quash them. Three University of Cambridge researchers discuss how innovations are supporting revolutionary struggles worldwide during the event Technologies of revolution: how innovations are undermining regimes every where.

Other events exploring technology include: 

• Artist Mark Farid explores the issue of mobile phone security during an interactive art project that reveals how easy it is to access people’s mobile phone data in Data shadow. Mark will also be in discussion about mobile phone data security with a panel of academics and technologists in Data Shadow: Anonymity is our only right, and that is why it must be destroyed
• An evening with writers from The Inkling will explore how online experience is beginning to re-shape our reality.
• Technology and data experts discuss how technology can help make Cambridge a better place to live during a day of talks, workshops, displays and a 24-hour city hack#Hackcambridge: towards a smarter city.
• Human augmentation is explored in Splinter: blurring the line between biology and technology an interactive light installation.

Established in 2008, Cambridge Festival of Ideas aims to fuel the public’s interest in arts, humanities and social sciences. The events, ranging from talks, debates and film screenings to exhibitions and comedy nights, are held in lecture halls, theatres, museums and galleries around Cambridge. Of the over 250 events at the Festival, most are free.

The Festival sponsors and partners are Cambridge University Press, St John’s College, Anglia Ruskin University, RAND Europe, Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Cambridge Live, University of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden, Arts Council England, Cambridge Junction, British Science Association, Heritage Lottery Fund, Heffers, WOW Festival, Southbank Centre, Collusion, TTP Group, Goethe Institut, Index on Censorship and BBC Cambridgeshire. 

This year, Cambridge Festival of Ideas are conducting a range of speaker spotlights (Q&A interviews) with a range of high-profile speakers, including Rev Christina Beardsley, Professor David Runciman, Perter Hitchens, and many more. These are uploaded daily: www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk/features/speaker-spotlights

Further information can also be found at: www.festivalofideas.cam.ac.uk

Facebook:  www.facebook.com/cambridgefestivalofideas    

Twitter: @camideasfest   #cfi2015