Artificial Intelligence: Exploring Ideas, Applications, and Risks

Professor Alberto Paccanaro
Department of Computer Science

Shilling Building Auditorium

This year's Jack Pridham Lecture is being given by Professor Alberto Paccanaro on a particularly timely topic of Artificial Intelligence. Just this week the Nobel Prize for physics was awarded on “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks” to John J Hopfield and Geoffrey E Hinton.  Alberto did his PhD with Hinton and took part in the perception and development of this field over the past decades. This will be a public lecture meant to be for a broad audience across the University and beyond and promises to guide through the inception, meaning, potentials and risks of AI.

AI is transforming our world, from everyday technologies to groundbreaking advances in medicine, industry, and beyond. Yet, despite its growing impact, there remains considerable confusion about what AI really is and how it works. In this lecture, we will take an accessible journey through the core ideas behind AI, clarifying key terms and demystifying the technologies that drive it. Along the way, we will explore some of AI’s impressive applications, the ethical challenges it raises, and the potential risks it poses for the future.

Short biography of Professor Alberto Paccanaro

Alberto Paccanaro is Professor of Machine Learning and Computational Biology in the Department of Computer Science at Royal Holloway, University of London. He completed his undergraduate studies in Computer Science at the University of Milan and received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Toronto in 2002, specializing in machine learning under the supervision of Geoffrey Hinton. From 2002 to 2006, he was a postdoc in Mansoor Saqi’s lab at Queen Mary University of London and in Mark Gerstein’s lab at Yale University. In 2006, he joined Royal Holloway and established his own lab (https://paccanarolab.org/). He has been visiting professor at Cornell, Yale, the University of Venice and the Catholic University of Asuncion in Paraguay. Alberto’s work focuses on developing machine learning algorithms to address complex problems in molecular biology, medicine, and pharmacology. He is particularly interested in the integration of AI with systems biology and its potential to transform healthcare and drug discovery.

There will be a reception before (5.30pm) and after the lecture.

All welcome, booking is advised.