The public availability of chat-enabled AI tools has stirred apprehension, excitement, and speculation. Our three panelists,  David McDonald (SF93, Tutor), Curtis Johnson (SF89, Sandia National Laboratories), Patrick Anderson, (SF MALA20 and MAEC22, Substack author on technology) and Benjamin Scott (SF25, current student) will provide starting points for a conversation with the audience about machine intelligence, what it is, what it is not, and the ramifications of its use. Among the interests of the panelists are: the problems surrounding tool-use, especially in the case of tools as poorly understood and as protean as AI; the limits of AI human-language interfaces for high-stakes applications; the possibilities for AI-assistance in creativity; the relation of generative AI to the original human works from which it derives; and the significance of ‘low-tech’ education in an era of increasing automation.

This discussion will be recorded and made available to the public.

Curtis Johnson (SF ‘89) is an R&D manager at Sandia National Laboratories, where he has worked since 1993.  He currently focuses on analytics for law enforcement, blockchain and peer to peer networks, and text analytics for a wide range of national security applications.  Hobby geek interests include understanding how natural selection-like mechanisms play out in other domains and the science of creativity.

Benjamin Scott (Undergraduate) is a student at St. John’s College in Santa Fe studying the liberal arts. He has a particular interest in the intersections between theory and practice, and the ways tools have influenced human thought. He runs an AI and computation reading group on campus and is interested in thinking about new models to account for our increasingly technological existence.