Aspen Review Café: Beyond the Human

Aspen Review Café entitled Beyond the Human took place for the first time in Budapest with Aleksandra Przegalińska, Research Fellow at the Center for Collective Intelligence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Boston (her cover story in the actual issue) and Kristóf Bárdos, Green Fox Academy, chaired by Aspen alumna Antónia Meszáros, Executive Director at UNICEF Hungary.

Aleksandra Przegalińska elaborated in her presentation How to go gentle through the Tech Storm on development of AI, ethics in AI, legal aspects of AI. She extensively informed on her research on chatbots and human-machine interaction, expressing doubts on possibility to fully replace machines. She also mentioned various AI devices on the market, which are controversial due to their ethical, health, or other impacts on humans.

Kristóf Bárdos presented his study on Future of Work. He tries to see the upcoming changes as challenges more than a threat. Nevertheless, he emphasized that there will be most probably regions and group of professions, where it will be difficult to adapt as fast as the disruptive changes caused by technology development will be coming, therefore there will be a need to offer an assistance and support to them. He emphasized that long life education will more urgent than ever.

The presentations were followed by a discussion with profound questions by Antónia Meszáros on future of work and Universal Basic Income,  questioning singularity coming any time soon, and on general use of AI or other digital devices.