The 9 Are Abroad — Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI

The Manchester Statistical Society hosts Daniel Dresner, Professor of Cyber Security at the University of Manchester, at Cross Street Chapel. Dresner's argument, delivered with more literary reference than most security talks manage, is that humanity's response to new technology swings between banning everything and pressing the button to see what happens, and that there is very little genuinely new under the sun. Technology, on this reading, is mostly a matter of speed. He is sceptical of AI's comparative adjectives, preferring to call it alleged intelligence, and traces how the field ended up detached from the body of practice that should ground it. Two hours in one of the city's oldest learned societies. Why go: a security professor being properly rude about AI hype, in front of an audience of statisticians who will push back. Best for anyone tired of credulous AI talks.