IIDI's AWARE project host successful talk at Edinburgh International Science Festival

The AWARE project was delighted to present a talk by Professor Alan Winfield at the Edinburgh International Science Festival on 12th April.

See a cartoonist's summary of the talk below!

http://radiocartoonist.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/edinburgh-science-festival-6-thinking.html

The Festival is one of Europe’s largest celebrations of science and technology, and this event was an opportunity to raise the profile of awareness research amongst the public.

Press headlines frequently refer to robots that think like humans, have feelings, or even behave ethically, but is there any basis of truth in such headlines, or are they simply sensationalist hype? Computer scientist EW Dijkstra famously wrote “the question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarine can swim”, but the question of robot thought is one that cannot so easily be dismissed. In this talk I will describe the current state-of-the-art in robot intelligence. I will attempt to answer the question “how intelligent are present day intelligent robots?” and describe efforts to design robots that are not only more intelligent but also have a sense of self. But if we should be successful in designing such robots, would they think like animals, or even humans? And are there risks, or ethical issues, in attempting to design robots that think?