Artificial is AI’s frst name. And Intelligence is a quality, not a quantity. You can’t measure it with a dipstick, a ruler, or an IQ test. If you could, you’d get the same result every time.*

But being artificial doesn’t mean AI isn’t dangerous, fun or both. It is, and will be, what we make of it.

That’s what Don Norman says, and he’s been publishing in AI journals since 1973. His laboratory produced the first multi-layer neural nets in the 1980s. He wrote Things that Make us Smart in 1993.

In the opinion of myself and countless others, Don is also the foremost authority on design—of anything and everything. For more on that, check out Don’s Web page, his Wikipedia page, and his books. Or, if you just want to sample some of his thoughts on AI, watch this.

Or you can skip all that and come to the good stuff: joining us in a talk with Don in the final salon of this semester on the topic of Artificial +/vs. Human Intelligence. It’s next Tuesday, April 9, at Noon Eastern time. (That’s less than 24 hours after the shadow of the Moon passes over the Indiana University campus. Yes, totality will be local here.)

Also, this won’t be a lecture or a presentation. It will be a lively discussion because Don is especially good at that.

It’s also free and online, but you have to register first. Do that here.

*For what it’s worth, my own known IQ test scores have an 80-point range. I’ve written about that, and the myth of “IQ” here, here, here, here, and I suppose in too many other places.

What shall we make of AI?

Marina Zannoli has something to say about that, and she’ll say it this coming Tuesday, October 17, at Indiana University—and online too, at 12pm Eastern time. The title of her talk is Mastering AI: What I Learned as the Chief of Staff of Fundamental AI Research at Meta.

Though her work at Meta, Dr. Zannoli has come to believe that maximizing what’s useful about AI and minimizing what’s scary requires close collaboration between academic, industry, and governmental organizations. She’ll explain how in a lively discussion that will take place at the Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies at IU, and online via Zoom (on a wall-sized screen).

Her talk is the second in this year’s Beyond the Web Salon Series, themed Human +/vs. Artificial intelligence. It is co-hosted Ostrom Workshop and the Hamilton Lugar School, both at IU.

The cost is $0, but you have to register to attend the Zoom. Do that here. And I’ll see you there.

The image above was generated by Bing Image Creator, using a prompt I can’t find right now but was something like, “Give me an image of people building a giant AI.” It was my first whack at using the service, and I think it worked pretty well.