'Can the values of the Enlightenment survive the digital age?', with Sir Adrian Smith

Thursday 19th October
6.00pm BST
Livestreamed from the Quarry Whitehouse Auditorium, Selwyn College, The University of Cambridge
During the period from the mid-seventeenth to the mid-eighteenth century, an intersection of philosophical ideas and what came to be called the scientific method challenged much previous orthodoxy and gelled into what is often referred to as “the values of the enlightenment”.
The key components of the Enlightenment were the use and celebration of reason and the idea that the pursuit of knowledge in order to improve the human condition was to be undertaken by means of reason and the assembling of evidence. Alongside this “scientific” view of the world, there was also the growth of more general social values, including liberty, fraternity, tolerance and constitutional government.
In this talk, Adrian will reflect on some of the challenges posed to these long-cherished values and approaches by the advent of the internet, social media and the rise of artificial intelligence. A conversation will follow, with audience questions encouraged.
Sir Adrian Smith (SE 1965, Mathematics) is President of the Royal Society and an Honorary Fellow of Selwyn College. He is also Institute Director and Chief Executive of The Alan Turing Institute, the United Kingdom's national institute for data science and artificial intelligence.
Outside these roles, Adrian Smith is a mathematician with expertise in Bayesian statistics. This branch of mathematics represents uncertainties in the form of probabilities, which are then modified through the mechanism of Bayes theorem as new information becomes available.

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An assertion laden talk on how important critical thinking is in the digital age. At one point Smith says ULEZ is the right policy for the long term without any justification for his claim. He ststes that the thinking if the "deplorables" is "undesirable". Another assertion. Stopped listening at that point.