The Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (ICREA) is collaborating with the Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre (CCCB) for the ICREA-CCCB Debates in order to inform the general public about the advances being made in high-level research in Catalonia and the challenges it faces.

“Machines That Think: Opportunities and Dilemmas of Artificial Intelligence” reflects on the creation of intelligence, considering the limits researchers have encountered up until now and the moral limits that may exist. The director of the Department of Experimental and Health Sciences (DCEXS), Arcadi Navarro, will raise the benefits that intelligence has given to the human species in his conference entitled “Intelligence as evolution strategy”, to be given on 1 December. The following week, on 9 December, Hector Geffner, leader of the Artificial Intelligence group at the Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC) will examine how artificial intelligence is studied and will also analyse the social and human implications of this technology through his lecture “Present and future of artificial intelligence”.

Mel Slater, from the Event Lab of the University of Barcelona (UB) and Mavi Sánchez-Vives, researcher at the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute (IDIBAPS), will close the series with the conference “Perception and reality: understanding virtual worlds”.

The researchers, all ICREA professors, will give their lectures at 7 pm at the CCCB. This edition of the ICREA-CCCB Debates is linked to Human+, an exhibition that has enjoyed the collaboration of Ricard Solé, leader of the Complex Systems Lab of the Institute of Evolutionary Biology (IBE; CSIC-UPF). This exhibition explores the boundaries of what it means to be a human being and the possible future paths of our species by considering both historical and emerging technologies, as well as their cultural and ethical contexts.