AI meets psychology to ask what is intelligence; and how human brains and AI differ in terms of sensing, memory and a sense of self.

Speaker

Tony Prescott

Synopsis

This talk will explore the relationship between Psychology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) encompassing aspects of human psychology, neuroscience, and contemporary foundation models and agentic AI.

I will address questions such as:

What is intelligence?

Is the brain some kind of biological computer?

Does AI understand anything?

Are we on the threshold of AI superintelligence?

The talk will be illustrated with work from my own lab and others on sensing, memory, and sense of self for animal-like and humanoid robots.

About the speaker

Tony Prescott (him/his) is a Professor of Robotics at the University of Sheffield. He holds an MA in Psychology (Edinburgh), an MSc in Applied Artificial Intelligence (Aberdeen), a PhD in Machine Learning (Sheffield) and is a fellow of the British Psychological Society.

Tony has published over 250 refereed articles and journal papers at the intersection of AI and psychology and has received over £10M in funding from UK and European research agencies. He is the author of the book The Psychology of Artificial Intelligence (Routledge, 2024) and lead editor of Living Machines: A Handbook of Research in Biomimetic and Biohybrid Systems (OUP, 2018).

His research has been covered by the major news and scientific media including the BBC, CNN, Discovery Channel, The Guardian and New Scientist. Tony regularly writes and speaks on societal and ethical issues in psychology and artificial intelligence. For more information see his blog page or follow @tonyjprescott on BlueSky.

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