On September 2024, at the Vienna Humanities Festival, Tim Crane will argue in conversation with Peter Knees that we should rather be focusing on the real, practical risks of current AI instead of the myths coming with the hype. You can find further details on the official website of the event.

Abstract

There is a large public debate about AI and the risks involved as it develops. However, Tim Crane claims that it is important to distinguish the real risks from the hype and the myths. These myths are often propagated by the AI firms themselves. One of them is the unfounded idea that something like current technology could create “conscious AI.” Another is the notion that we are on the brink of creating artificial general intelligence (AGI). Instead of these sci-fi ideas, Crane suggests in conversation with Peter Knees that we should rather be focusing on the real, practical risks of current AI.

About the Speaker

Tim Crane is a professor of philosophy at the Central European University (CEU) in Vienna, where he is also a pro-rector and director of research of the FWF Cluster of Excellence Knowledge in Crisis. Crane works on the philosophy of mind and has taught previously at the University of Cambridge and UCL. His books include The Objects of Thought (Oxford University Press, 2013) and The Meaning of Belief (Harvard University Press, 2017).

About the Event

This event is part of the Vienna Humanities Festival. The Vienna Humanities Festival was launched in 2016 by Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), the European Network of Debate Houses “Time to Talk” (TTT), and the Wien Museum. Since then, it has become one of the annual highlights of Viennese cultural life. Under the motto UNCHARTED / NEULAND, this year’s edition will once again gather some of the world’s most innovative thinkers on the last weekend of September to examine and interpret the political, ecological, technological, economic, artistic, and philosophical dilemmas that sometimes threaten to overwhelm us as individuals and communities. Their ideas will help us start to outline the contours of our changing new realities and enable us to fashion the new tools we will need in order to navigate these worlds with greater confidence and a more developed sense of direction, whether they are local or planetary, virtual or real, revolutionary or reactionary.

Entry to the weekend events is free.