Join us on Tuesday 3rd March at the iCAST Creative Hub for our next Science Café.
This month we are being joined by Neil Howard. Neil has bachelor and PhD degrees from York University and over 30 years experience designing and leading teams developing Application-Specific Integrated Circuits, spanning a wide range of applications from satellite-borne GPS to commercial robotics, from Linux Systems-on-chip to tiny AI sensors and neural implants. He has given many talks to the Swindon Philosophical Society over the last 15 years, many being related to the brain. Neil is currently writing a popular science book on theoretical neuroscience and AI.
It is common for people to talk about the brain as if it were a computer: resetting, rewiring, rebooting and reprogramming the brain and such like. However, researchers can now grow ‘Synthetic Biological Intelligence’ on a dish, connect it up to a virtual world, and it will just proceed to learn about and interact with that virtual world in an intelligent way. No one did anything like programming it for it to behave that way. What is that ‘bunch of neurons’ (as Francis Crick put it) on a dish actually doing? This talk will try to answer that by presenting a theoretical framework of the brain that is very different from any computer analogy.
A follow-up talk ‘Neurophilosophy’ will be given to the Swindon Philosophical Society on Wednesday 11 March about some of the philosophical implications of the neuroscience discussed tonight, including free will and consciousness.
To book your place, please register here: Swindon Science Cafe – The brain is not a computer, with Neil Howard Tickets, Tuesday, Mar 3 from 7 pm to 9 pm | Eventbrite
