Artificial Intelligence and the Future of Humans

AI is giving us excellent tools to write letters and reports in hundreds of languages, identify disease in images, or even accurately ‘recreate the past’. This brings incredible opportunity for increased productivity, medical breakthroughs, or precision agriculture to name a few. However, there are many alarming aspects from loss of jobs to ethical dilemmas to existential risk. We will explore some of the questions and some of the answers to understand how AI can be your ally and not your enemy. We will try to leave you more informed, inspired, and ready to navigate the future with confidence.

Magnaporthe is a fungus that causes disease in crops such as rice and wheat. The fungus uses hundreds of different specialised ‘effector’ proteins to wreak havoc within the plant. Traditionally, the DNA of these effectors would be compared to try and guess what their individual functions are. Instead, I’m using an AI model to predict the shapes of these effectors to better guess what they do within the plant. In this talk I hope to convey how some of the concepts found in mainstream AI applications are being used in other software to further science, using my research as an example.

Scientists often require high precision or testing of thousands of samples. In these cases, robots can help. Automation, or robots, speeds up science! Join me to learn about our daily work with robots.