Newcastle — We Should Fear AI

Sci Fight: Science/Comedy Debates

Sci Fight Science Comedy Debate brings together comedians and scientists to debate serious issues in a ridiculous way.

Proceedings are loosely held together by your definitely qualified host, Alanta Colley [citation needed]. Sci Fight has been described as a nerdy, silly, and only occasionally litigious romp into what it even means to be alive.

This round, we debate: should we fear AI?

Just this year, AI chatbots have given people instructions on how to build a bomb, told users that they loved them, and instructed one user to leave their spouse and a child to stick nails into a live power socket. Before now you had to go to 4chan for that quality of abuse. Has Silicon Valley simply built a better troll?

Programmers are running behind ChatGPT and other AI trying to fix the problems as they arise and yet for every bit of foolproofing they achieve, humanity builds a better fool. Our one saving grace right now? It’s bad at Wordle. But this will surely not be the case for long.

Or is AI overhyped? Is our distrust of AI just our barely concealed sense of inadequacy, concern that a jacked-up two-bit calculator might prove a more sparkling conversationalist than we do?

Or is the real fear that the true flaw of AI is that it is built on data that humans made, and that all of its shortcomings were inherited from us? Do we simply fear ourselves?

Come and watch 6 very human scientists and comedians assess whether we’re on the brink of the AI-pocalypse or a Utop-AI.