2018 Program

Our 2018 program consisting of ten talks will begin on Saturday 7 April. All the forums start at 4 pm on Saturday afternoons at Blackheath Community Hall (corner of the Great Western Highway and Gardiner Crescent). 

The overall theme for this year’s series is Politics and the Future of Civilization – a vast, seemingly inexhaustible, topic that we intend to explore from a variety of perspectives. 

We are honoured to have as our first speaker the Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, Huw Price. He will address the potential implications of the development of ‘strong’ artificial intelligence, the kind of generalized intelligence that we humans tend to believe is unique to our species. 

Most researchers think this breakthrough will occur in the present century – possibly within decades – and presents both catastrophic risks and potentially huge benefits. How to maximize the chances of a benign outcome? Professor Price has been actively involved in high level academic and industry discussions about this as Co-Founder of the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER), and Academic Director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence (CFI).

The full program is just about finalized, and details will be posted to subscribers to our email list in early March.

To receive notices of our activities join the email list

Thanks to the Family First Credit Union and the Blackheath Area Neighbourhood Centre for their continuing support.