Monsters in the Shadows

Humans are very good at spotting patterns, even when there isn't anything there.
Clouds look like animals, monsters lurk in the shadows, and random noise never looks quite random enough.
It seems patterns just can't be avoided, even if we try.
Why is this? And what does it have to do with losing at noughts and crosses?

Throughout its history artificial intelligence (AI) research has often been driven by games, defeating the best players and world champions of chess in the early days, or Jeopardy! and AlphaGo more recently. The techniques and algorithms applied by these very different AI tells us a lot about the way that AI has advanced and evolved. In this talk we will chart the history of AI game playing and along the way give a flavour of the different underpinning technologies, from heuristic search to deep neural networks.

Nello Cristianini: Really Cool Things You Can Do with AI
AI can translate languages, recognise faces, and soon also drive your car. Let’s demystify this technology.

Cristianini Nello: Really Scary Things You Can Do with AI
How do we know technology will only be used in the way we expect? How should we live in a world that is increasingly embracing data, where communications are mediated by intelligent systems, and our needs are guessed by software?