Theme: Intelligence: Artificial or Human?

Humans are remarkable beings. Thanks to their abstract reasoning skills, complex societies and opposable thumbs, they have become the undisputable apex predator and have thoroughly reshaped the face of this planet. We like to think of ourselves as intelligent, rational beings. However, this idea is often disproven. We are terrible at risk assessment, have numerous biases and are susceptible to conspiracy theories. It is hard to convince us ‘rational’ beings, often even with solid evidence.

On to the machines then. They are free of emotional ties and rely exclusively on cold, hard data. Surely they will succeed where we can’t? Indeed, frequently, artificial intelligence can outperform trained experts at certain tasks. Yet they currently lack some defining human traits, like empathy and creativity. So what is it that makes a being ‘intelligent’? Can we teach a computer morality and creativity?

Join us in our search for answers (and additional questions) in this Salon!

Centraal auditorium Gasthuisberg
Herestraat 49
Leuven, Vlaams-Brabant (nl), 3000
Belgium

Andrea Renda

Senior Research Fellow and Head of Global Governance, Regulation, Innovation & Digital Economy

Andrea Renda is Professor of Digital Innovation at the College of Europe in Bruges; Head of Global governance, Regulation, Innovation and Digital Economy (GRID) at CEPS in Brussels, and a Member of the EU High Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence.

Frank Van Overwalle

Professor of Psychology

Frank Van Overwalle teaches at the faculty of Psychology of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB). He got his doctorate in 1987 with the topic “Causes for the success and failures of first year students”. Afterwards, he studied as a postdoc at the University of California and became a professor at the VUB. He applied his and others’ research for the development of neural network models of social cognition. In 2005, he went on to research social neurosciences with “real” brains. His work earned him many scholarships from his university and the Research Foundation - Flanders (FWO).

Gilles De Meester

PhD researcher

Gilles De Meester is a FWO fellow and PhD student in the Functional Morphology Group at the University of Antwerp. He is interested in the evolution of animal cognition, especially in relation to environmental complexity. The central goal of his PhD is to study how cognitive abilities may be linked to the fitness of an individual and whether this link may differ between environments, using lizards as a study system.

Livia De Picker

Psychiatrist & Postdoctoral Researcher

Livia de Picker is a Psychiatrist & Postdoctoral Researcher, respectively at the University Hospital Duffel and the University of Antwerp. She is also a lecturer on the topic of Psychopathology and Psychopharmacology" in module Acute Psychiatry. Her specialties include personality disorders, borderline and general psychiatric problems.

Margriet Sitskoorn

Professor of clinical neuropsychology

Margriet Sitskoorn is professor of clinical neuropsychology at Tilburg University. Her research focuses on the relationship between brain and behavior, and on how behavior and environment, influence the brain and how one can thus influence the emotions, skills and behavior of healthy people and patients. She is director of the top performance lab within the Department of Cognitive Neuropsychology. Within this lab research is done on how to improve the performance of (top) athletes and (top) managers. Based on this research, new training methods are developed for the world of top sports and the business world. She is also a member of the knowledge board of the top sports community.

Radu Surdeanu

Senior Director Government Affairs

Educated as a physicist and with experience in various large multinationals, Radu is passionate about technologies of the future, specifically on the impact of Artificial Intelligence on society. As an active Happonomist and Zen practitioner, Radu is an advocate of a future where humanity will reach the next level, with AI and spirituality interconnected, for the well-being of all.

Thomas Winters

PhD researcher

Thomas Winters is a FWO fellow and Machine Learning PhD student at the KU Leuven DTAI research group, researching computational creativity with probabilistic models. His research has mostly been about automatic humor generation, implementing AI systems that perform improvisational theatre and developing interpretable creative artificial intelligence frameworks.