SNF Nostos Conference: Humanity and Artificial Intelligence
June 24 & 25, 2021
In this century, few technologies promise to shape life more profoundly than artificial intelligence. AI will touch every facet of human existence, from how and where we live, what we eat, and how we work, play and create, to how we get well when we’re sick, and how we make war and peace.
AI will challenge, and reshape, our very idea of what it means to be human. The things that have defined our sense of humanity’s uniqueness – our ability to conceptualize the world, to reason about it, and perhaps, even to think creatively about it – will be matched, and sometimes exceeded, by machine.
And so, we must ask: how can we make sure that this technology emboldens the human spirit, rather than diminishes it? How might we use AI to build a healthier, greener, and more equitable world? Can we limit the risks of AI, and ensure its benefits are widely shared? Can we use AI to overcome our limitations and not simply reinforce them?
On June 24 and 25, 2021, the Stavros Niarchos Foundation (SNF) will convene a diverse set of leaders, experts, visionaries and artists from around the world to explore these questions, and the many possible ways in which AI and our humanity will be entwined in the decades to come. We’ll examine the way AI may shape human life from birth to death. We’ll investigate new ways in which AI might help us learn, grow, and create new kinds of communities, new kinds of places. We’ll explore the impact of AI on the work and economies of the future, and the ways in which it will influence human relationships, with each other and the planet. The conversation will be global and will include voices from many fields and perspectives, from the arts to medicine, from law and civil society.
The SNF DIALOGUES, a series of events held through journalism nonprofit iMEdD (incubator for Media Education and Development), will host, as they do every year, an open discussion as part of the SNF Nostos Conference. The discussion will be held in collaboration with SNF Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. Continuing a run of online DIALOGUES discussions that began in April 2020, and which have audience participation at their core, this event will focus on the new dynamics that arise from the relationship between humans and machines, and on the challenges artificial intelligence poses for human connection, creativity, and democracy.
The DIALOGUES are curated and moderated by Anna-Kynthia Bousdoukou.
We invite you to join us for the 2021 SNF Conference on Humanity and Artificial Intelligence!