Google Firestarters 20: Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Intelligence Augmentation (IA)? - The Event

Last week 300 planners were packed into Google HQ in London to talk all things AI, robotics and machine learning. This whole area, despite being with us for a long time, has suddenly become a huge area of focus for the industry not least because of the huge shifts in behaviour, advantage and opportunity that it will bring. We wanted to take as broad a perspective as possible with this event, and so we had five exceptional speakers, each with a unique point of view on the theme. Author and designer Tom Chatfield kicked us off by talking about how much of the recent focus on AI has been around the'usurpation narrative of human-machine interactions…a creation is pitted against its creators, aspiring ultimately to supplant them'. Science fiction is full of machines that are out to eliminate or hoodwink us, and the application of AI in game scenarios (Go, Chess) always means that there's a winner (usually the machine) and a loser (the human creator).