AI Will Be Your Overlord: Faster, Brighter, Better Than You?

Gresham College Lectures

“Scary”, “Worried”, “Dangerous” were some of the most frequent words to describe AI in a recent UK Government public survey. Do you fear, as many do, that AI will lead to us becoming second-class entities? In this first lecture, we will explore this ascendency, considering how notions of intelligence, sentience, perception, consciousness and reasoning are being framed and challenged in an AI-centred world; and surface the social, economic and ethical implications of these developments.

This lecture was recorded by Professor Dominic Broomfield-McHugh on 23rd September 2025 at Barnard's Inn Hall, London.

Matt Jones is a computer scientist at Swansea University - and a Fellow of the British Computer Society - who works alongside colleagues from many other disciplines and directly with everyday folk across the world to explore the future of digital technologies. Over the last 30-plus years, this human-centred approach has led to novel approaches for, amongst other things, mobile phone-based information searching and browsing, pedestrian navigation, voice assistants and deformable displays.

The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website: https://www.gresham.ac.uk/watch-now/ai-better

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