Lunchtime Talks are a series of informal presentations at Watershed's Pervasive Media Studio. They normally take place at 13:00 on a Friday, are free and are open to everybody who is interested in what they do. Come along, bring a sandwich, and get to know more about the Studio community, current and up-coming projects, or residents' work.

Studio resident Tim Kindberg has been looking for a way of putting the actual capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) – as opposed to the hype – into perspective. Even after 60 years, and notwithstanding recent advances, the achievements in the field of AI remain well below human capabilities, despite claims of a coming 'singularity'.

Rather than humanoid robots, in this Lunchtime Talk Tim will argue, a better conception of AI's incarnation would be an artificial dog, which smells your data. This is a deliberately uncomfortable analogy. As a tool of what he will identify as statistical capitalism, the implications of this technology are profound. He will raise the question of how the tech and art communities can respond.

Tim has written a blog article about AI, The Scent of Data: https://matter2media.com/blog/scent-of-data/

The Pervasive Media Studio is located within the Watershed building. Let us know if you'd like a tour and we'll be happy to show you around. Send an email to studio@watershed.co.uk

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