EECS Colloquium
Wednesday, September 27, 2017
306 Soda Hall (HP Auditorium)
4:00 - 5:00 pm
Edward A. Lee
Robert S. Pepper Distinguished Professor, UC Berkeley
Professor Ken Goldberg (IEOR) and Professor Jitendra Malik (EECS) to discuss the premise of Edward Lee's new book: "Plato and the Nerd."

Edward Lee speaks on Symbiosis or Annihilation? How Humans and Technology Coevolve, 9/27/17
Abstract
In this talk, I argue that digital technology and computing are coevolving, in a Darwinian sense, with human culture. I examine the relationship between discovery, invention, and design, and the way that background models ("unknown knowns") shape technology development. I claim that technology is limited less by physical constraints than by lack of imagination and inability to adapt. Human creativity in design, invention, and discovery provides mutation, and then symbiotic coevolution takes over. Pursuing a yin and yang balance, I show that digital computing, as defined today, does not provide the universal information-processing machines that many people assume. I confront the question of whether physical processes and cognition are digital and computational and show that the thesis that they are is not falsifiable and therefore not scientific. And I argue that the aim of artificial intelligence to reproduce human cognitive functions vastly underestimates the potential of computers. This talk draws from my just-published book, Plato and the Nerd -- The Creative Partnership of Humans and Technology, MIT Press, 2017.
Followed by panel discussion with Professor David Bates (Rhetoric), Professor Ken Goldberg (IEOR) and Professor Jitendra Malik (EECS)