Artificial Intelligence and the human mind by Dr Wenjun Xia, University of Leeds

What’s the difference between human brains and AI? Can AI evolve to think for itself? If it can, will we still be able to control it?
This talk will start with an overview of scientific research on neurons. Then Wenjun will address related ethical concerns in brain science, examining the moral implications of advances in neurotechnology and the potential impact on personal identity and autonomy. She will go on to discuss the possibility that AI could evolve to have their own thoughts and to consider the potential consequences of such a development. Are minds the last dignity we can defend for ourselves as humans? And how do we develop science and safeguards to help to defend the autonomy of our minds?
Wenjun Xia - known also as June - earned her Masters and PhD degrees in the School of Mathematics at the University of Edinburgh. She went on to work as an Associate Professor in the School of Mathematical Sciences in Jiangsu University in China. Currently, she’s a Visiting Professor at the School of Computing, University of Leeds, collaborating with Professor Netta Cohen* and Dr Marc de Kamps on neuroscience. Her publications include a paper, collaborating with other scientists, that was published in Nature Neuroscience.

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I don't think humanistic consciousness will ever be achieved through back propagation networks, this is because they are unable to incorporate new memories and experiences into the weights at runtime, whereas spiketiming/hebbian networks naturally incorporate new memories. But we will get there eventually since the ultimate source of inspiration comes from nature.