Programme / The Role of Artificial & Human Intelligence In Solving Global Challenges & Supporting Science In The Arab World

How does artificial and human intelligence combine to help fight extremism content on Utube where 83% of worrisome videos are now being flagged in real-time and what should we think when Google’s AlphaGoZero teaches itself to be the world’s best Go player and dispenses with human wisdom? Is it already the present for some of us and the future for all to have Android receptionists in our shopping malls, robot workers in our factories or to have our newspaper articles written by search engines or our CVs and job interviews handled by machines? Do we even need Chief Science Advisers in government when AI might provide less biased answers or researchers in our labs when technology doesn’t need eating, smoking, toilet or sleeping breaks?

Viewed against phenomenal hundred billion $ investments in the global ‘artificial intelligence race’, this panel will demystify big-data and global information analytics through the eyes of scientific publishing’s role in solving global challenges. Big data analysis can tell us which pupils are at risk of dropping out of school, the path of the next pandemic, which cars are likely to be uninsured or the speed of glacial melting. It is increasingly part of scientific output and of policy decisions. Bringing together ethical and AI experts, policy-makers and the publisher of over 1800 scientific journals, speakers will argue that public discussion about research quality, validity, and trustworthiness must keep pace. Via a moderated audience debate, this session aims to reach firm conclusions about what decision-makers, the general public, journalists etc. need to know to hold the output of big data analytics to account. In particular, this session will use as case-studies the latest findings on gender and science and science in the Arab region. 

Organiser: Aidan Gilligan (IRL), CEO, SciCom – Making Sense of Science; Elected Member of the Governing Board, Euroscience; Executive Committee Member, International Network for Government Science Advice (INGSA).

Co-organiser: Michiel Kolman (NL), President, International Publishers Association & Senior Vice President, Information Industry Relations, Elsevier.