Artificial Intelligence will be the focus of this year’s Royal Institution Christmas Lectures by the Oxford Professor of Computer Science, Mike Wooldridge. In his series of lectures (broadcast on BBC Four in late December) he will attempt to disentangle the realities from the myths, but will also demonstrate the huge impact AI is already having in fields ranging from medicine to football to astrophysics, as well as on the creative arts.
The bestselling novelist Naomi Alderman has fun with AI and its tech trillionaire-creators in her latest thriller The Future. While the wealthy corporate heads are effectively decapitated by an end-of-the-world scenario, the story explores whether the technology that could presage the apocalypse can also be used for the good of society.
The Professor of Politics at Cambridge, David Runciman, wants to change the way people think about a future in which artificial intelligence has taken control. In The Handover he looks back to the formation of states and corporations, arguing that these are the precursors to AI: powerful artificial entities that have come to rule our world. While thy have made us richer and safer, he questions what will happen to human existence if these two machines – states and AI – join forces.
Producer: Katy Hickman
Iain Banks and David Hare
China
Peter Carey on Start the Week
The 'death of socialism'?
Werner Herzog on Start the Week
Nobel Prize winning author, Nadine Gordimer
Writers on Families: Colm Tóibín and AS Byatt
Middle Age: David Bainbridge, Deborah Moggach, Simon Armitage and Claudia Hammond
Faith and Doubt: Richard Holloway, Karen Armstrong, Jonathan Safran Foer and Helen Edmundson
Ian Stewart, Peter Randall-Page, Mark Miodownik, Jane Rapley
Elizabethans: Max Hastings, Mary Beard, John Guy and Lola Young
Conservatism: Peter Hitchens, Margot James, Douglas Murray and Thomas Frank
Revolution: Wael Ghonim, Paul Mason and Mary King
Justice: with Simon Stephens, John Podmore, Shami Chakrabarti and Mike Hough
Financial Crisis: Philip Coggan, Angela Knight, Maurice Glasman and Detlev Schlichter
Austerity: Antony Gormley, David Kynaston and Anna Coote
David Hockney Special
The Spirit of Christmas: Claire Tomalin, Susan Hill and Canon Giles Fraser
12/12/2011
Philosophy: Bernard-Henri Levy, Mary Warnock and Roger Scruton
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free
Global News Podcast
The Infinite Monkey Cage
Friday Night Comedy from BBC Radio 4
You’re Dead to Me
Elis James and John Robins