"The year AI went viral": Robot artist offers both Christmas greetings and a warning

An ultra-realistic robot artist, called Ai-Da, will take part in a U.K. yuletide tradition nearly 200 years old, the Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, in an attempt to demystify artificial intelligence.

Named after British mathematician and computer pioneer Ada Lovelace, robot Ai-Da is designed to blur the lines between humans and machines and provoke debate. The plan is For Ai-Da to interact with and paint this year’s guest lecturer Michael Wooldridge, Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford.

“What we're aiming to do with these lectures is look under the hood, demystify it and show you what's actually going on," Professor Wooldridge said. Wooldridge said AI has the potential to make all our lives better, but warns there are risks too, especially fake news.

The professor will try to explain how a machine can be taught to play a game or even teach itself, and explain the role AI is already playing in our daily lives – without us even being aware of it. And finally, he'll address the big question: is AI a threat?

"Me, Ai-da, the robot artist, I am not a threat. But some of the technologies that I represent, have the potential to be a risk," Ai-Da said.

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures date to the early 19th Century, having been initiated by scientist Michael Faraday who contributed pioneering research into electricity in the 1800s.

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