Welcome to our first episode of Season 2 of Reinforcement Talking, UCL AI Society's Podcast!

This episode is an audio version of our recent AI Debate. It's difficult to think of a question with higher stakes. Some AI experts like Geoffrey Hinton think that AI should be considered just as risky as pandemics or nuclear war; others, like Melanie Mitchell, see the risks as vanishingly small.

It was a pleasure to host 4 experts on this topic, including

• Reuben Adams, a UCL AI PhD student
• Chris Watkins, Professor in Computer Science at Royal Holloway
• Jack Stilgoe, a Science Technology Professor at UCL
• Kenneth Cukier, Deputy Executive Editor at The Economist.

If you'd prefer to watch the YouTube version, here's the link.⁠

The more AI develops, the more questions we have as to how these advances will affect our lives. Will AI soon take our jobs? What will happen to our privacy and uniqueness of identity? Will it pose an existential risk to humanity?

This episode, paradoxically, is a debate between two AI agents. Generated mostly by AI it gives a rational perspective on how this technology is changing our lives, answering the questions we often wonder about. At the end of the day, it’s crucial to remember that at the moment AI is just a tool and it’s up to us how to use it.

The metaverse is constantly changing, confounding, and creating new opportunities - in this episode, Kumardev Chatterjee clears up some of the myths surrounding metaverse adoption and how to move forward with it. We talk digital twins, metacrimes, and the EU's "24 hour beach party" in the metaverse.

Kumardev Chatterjee is a global serial tech innovator and entrepreneur, British Chevening Science Scholar and computer scientist from University College London. He has also been an expert on Entrepreneurship at the World Economic Forum since 2013, is on the Forbes Tech Council, a European Commission expert, and Metaverse Mastermind who co-founded the world’s first multi-billion dollar Cognitive Metaverse at NEOM.

What does it mean to have ethical AI? In this episode, Marcus Grazette of Holistic AI delves into his past work with privacy policy, mirrors between the GDPR and the EU AI Act, and why we all need interdisciplinary thinkers on AI teams. Plus, we try and find the big questions surrounding how to start regulating and making AI fairer for all.

Marcus Grazette is a Public Policy Lead at Holistic AI, working on AI auditing and technology policy. He was previously at the ICO dealing with adtech and personal data, and spent some time as a British diplomat.

What might the future of AI encompass? In this episode featuring Wim Naude, we delve into various potential future scenarios where humanity coexists with Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) - an advanced form of AI possessing human-like capabilities in multiple domains. How can we ensure that AGI adheres to human values? Could AGI bring forth unparalleled economic advancement? Is AGI a potential threat to humanity's existence? To answer these mind-bending questions, and more, Wim is the ideal guide, drawing on his extensive expertise in academia (ranked in the top 2% of global scientists by Stanford and Elsevier), politics (serving as a councillor for ANC in South Africa), and industry (founding multiple start-ups).

How can AI impact the global balance of power? This episode, we speak with Paul Scharre, one of the world’s leading voices on AI and geopolitics. Paul is a former US soldier, and worked in the Office for the Secretary of Defense working on policy on autonomous weapons. Paul is also an award-winning author: his book Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, won the 2019 Colby Award and was named one of Bill Gates’ top five books of 2018. In this episode, we speak about his new book, Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.

AI is considered to have one of the greatest impacts on medicine. Speaking with an expert in the field, a Professor of Neurology at UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Parashkev Nachev, we discuss how data science and AI are transforming healthcare. Talking about AI assisting clinicians in diagnosis, we question whether knowledge of genetic code will be able to facilitate decision-making. How do we eliminate biases and protect data in pursuit of individual treatment? Will doctors ever be replaced by robots?

We then converse about neurology and Computational Neuroscience discussing the possibilities of future brain modelling. Tune in to a thought-provoking discussion to learn more about the revolution in medicine and AI in brain modelling!