It's a new 'Odyssey' as Limerick Civic Trust and university host lecture weekend
Bank Holiday weekend event to shine a light on impact of AI
LIMERICK Civic Trust and University of Limerick have teamed up for the first-of-its-kind lecture series taking place this bank holiday weekend.
From Friday, October 23 until Sunday, October 25, the People’s Museum will play host to a number of internationally-renowned speakers including former CNN vice-president Karen Curry and Quentin Peel, a former international affairs editor at the Financial Times.
The focus of the lecture series will be ‘Love, Power and People in the Age of the Machine’.
It will explore love, democracy, artificial intelligence (AI), media, global power, conscience and the consequences to humans of technological change.
It all gets under way at 6pm on Friday evening with a lecture from Lord Stephen Green, the former group chief executive of HSBC, and winds up with a panel discussion reflecting on the weekend’s findings on Sunday afternoon.
Mr Peel’s contribution, on Saturday at 2pm, will explore the increasing technological rivalry between USA and China, industry warnings about the risk of AI, plus the demands it places on energy, water and infrastructure.
Media executive Ms Curry will trace the changes which have taken place in journalism over the past 50 years – from an era in which tens of millions of people watched the same evening news, to today’s fragmented global audiences.
Journalist, broadcaster and China specialist Isabel Hilton will turn the forum’s attention towards the changing international order.
Her Saturday afternoon conversation will be moderated by Professor Shane Kilcommins, the president of UL.
The overall weekend has been developed with the involvement of the arts and culture department at UL, and is being funded by a number of local businesses and private benefactors.
Civic Trust chief executive David O’Brien said: “Odyssey is really about one central question: are we becoming more powerful more quickly than we are becoming wise? We wanted to create something that does not treat artificial intelligence, politics, economics, religion or international affairs as separate subjects. They are increasingly part of the same conversation.”
Tickets are available for single lectures, or in a bundle covering the entire weekend.
Visit the Limerick Civic Trust’s website, or call 061-313399.