Sophie Hackford

Sophie will talk about the Earth becoming a computer, or a machine. Our home planet is being augmented to be capable of calculating things about itself, and about us.

New sensing technologies are stretching the fabric of intelligence to include robots, satellites, and sensors, both powered by – and creating – huge amounts of data. Our lives are becoming increasingly entangled with robots, as our data powers their lives.

From tiny antbots to drones to orbiting satellites, we are materially changing the surface of our planet (and beyond!) with hardware and software. Terraforming our planet just as much as others plan to terraform Mars.

Machine intelligence now lives out in the wild, in our homes, offices, cities, farms, countries. These computational landscapes are starting to change how we understand and optimise life here on Earth – what we can know and what we can do.

Finally, a new kind of intelligence is evolving from this planetary computer that we didn’t program in. Generative AI is one of the first examples of this emergence. As we can no longer lift the lid and see how it works, we need to ask some important questions about regulation, privacy, ethics, equity, and the ability to audit and control these new technologies. The role of humans in this brave new future will likely be a source of debate for years to come.

Sophie will argue that we need a new science of intelligence to help us get to grips with our new robot buddies and our new robot home.