These Strange New Minds – How AI Works | How To Academy
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Mon, 19 May 2025

6:15 pm - 7:30 pm BST

These Strange New Minds – How AI Works

Oxford Neuroscientist Christopher Summerfield, Research Director of the UK AI Safety Institute

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A former researcher at Google DeepMind, the UK AI Safety Institute’s Christopher Summerfield joins us to reveal whether we can look forward to a utopia, or are writing ourselves out of history.

Stunning advances in digital technology have given us a new wave of disarmingly human-like AI systems. The march of this new technology is set to upturn our economies, challenge our democracies, and refashion society in unpredictable ways. We can expect these AI systems to soon be making autonomous decisions on the user’s behalf, with transformative impact on everything we do. It is vital we understand how they work.

Christopher Summerfield is one of the UK’s foremost authorities on the brave new world of Artificial Intelligence. He helped design AI systems at Google DeepMind and is now both a Professor of Neuroscience at Oxford and Research Director of the UK Safety Institute. Now he joins us to answer your questions about the burgeoning new age of AI and explain what it means for you.

Can AI systems ‘think’, ‘know’ and ‘understand’? Could they manipulate or deceive you, and if so, what might they make you do? Whose interests do they ultimately represent? And when will they be able to move beyond words and take actions for themselves in the real world?

Find out from one of the most distinguished researchers operating in the field today.

Praise for Christopher Summerfield’s These Strange New Minds:

‘A brilliant guide to the most important technology of our times’ – Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI & Cofounder of DeepMind

‘By far the best guide to a newly emerging species with which we will share the planet for the foreseeable future’ – Stuart Russell, author of Human Compatible

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Christopher Summerfield

Research Director, AI Safety Institute

Christopher Summerfield has one foot in the field of neuroscience – studying the brains of humans, as Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford – and the other in AI research, as Research Director at the UK AI Safety Institute. Previously, he built intelligent systems at the pioneering Google DeepMind. He has won several awards, including the prestigious Cognitive Neuroscience Society Young Investigator Award in 2015. He is regularly invited to give keynote talks across the world. Christopher has published over 100 peer- reviewed articles, reviews, and book chapters and his academic book, Natural General Intelligence: How Understanding the Brain Can Help Us Build AI, was widely acclaimed.

Edie Lush

Award-winning Journalist and Broadcaster

Edie Lush is an award-winning journalist, an events MC and a communication trainer. She hosts events around the world — from the World Economic Forum in Davos to the COP Climate Summits. She has hosted several podcasts including Global GoalsCast, made in collaboration with the United Nations. She has been the Economics and Political correspondent for Bloomberg Television, a columnist at The Week magazine and the Associate Editor of Spectator Business magazine. Her work has appeared in many publications including Prospect, the Spectator and the BBC. She runs her own business providing senior Leaders, Influencers, Academics and Executives with Communication training — focusing now on increasing impact in both online and in person appearances.

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