Here's an initial announcement of the next Extrobritannia get-together. I'll
re-post once the venue has been finalised.

Topic: Machine super intelligence

Dr Shane Legg leads a state-of-the-art review of models of how super intelligent
machines might work.

2pm-4pm, Saturday 31st October

*** About the talk:

What ever happened to the ambitious aims of artificial intelligence,
specifically, its original goal of creating an "intelligent machine"? Are we any
closer to this than we were 20 or 30 years ago? Indeed, have we made any
progress on figuring out what intelligence is, let alone knowing how to build
one? After all, if we had a clearer idea of where we want to get to, we might
be able to come up with some better ideas on how to get there!

Clearly, artificial intelligence could do with a better theoretical foundation.
This talk will outline work on creating such a foundation:

*) What is intelligence?
*) How can we formalise machine intelligence?
*) Solomonoff Induction: a universal prediction system.
*) AIXI: Hutter's universal artificial intelligence.
*) MC-AIXI: a computable approximation of AIXI.
*) Can the brain tell us anything useful for building an AI?
*) Is building a super intelligent machine a good idea?

*** About the speaker:

Dr Shane Legg is a post doctoral research associate at the Gatsby Computational
Neuroscience Unit, University College London. He received a PhD in 2008 from
the Department of Informatics, University of Lugano, Switzerland. His PhD
supervisor was Prof. Marcus Hutter, the originator of the AIXI model of optimal
machine intelligence. Upon the completion of his PhD he won the $10,000 Canadian
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Prize and was also awarded a
post doctoral research grant by the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Shane is a native of New Zealand. After training in mathematics he began a
career as a software engineer, mostly for American companies specialising in
artificial intelligence. In 2003 he returned to academia to complete a PhD.
His research has been published in top academic journals (e.g. IEEE TEC), and
featured in mainstream publications (e.g. New Scientist). All of Shane's
publications, including his doctoral thesis "Machine super intelligence", are
available on his website, http://www.vetta.org