Artificial Intelligence

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss artificial intelligence. Can we create a machine that creates? Some argue so. And is consciousness, as we are, with headaches and tiffs and moods and small pleasures and sore feet - often all at the same time - capable of taking place in a machine? Artificial intelligence machines have been growing much more intelligent since Alan Turing’s pioneering days at Bletchley in World War Two. Its claims are now very grand indeed. It is 31 years since Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C Clarke gave us HAL - the archetypal thinking computer of the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. But are we any nearer to achieving the thinking, feeling computer? Or is it just a dream - and should it remain as one?

→ Play on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Igor Aleksander 3 episodes
  Professor, Imperial College London
• John Searle No other episodes
  Professor of Philosophy, University of California

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Programme ID: p00545h7

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00545h7

Auto-category: 006.3 (Artificial Intelligence)