Professor Barry O’Sullivan will take part in a Royal Irish Academy discourse with Dame Wendy Hall on Thursday the 4th of March.
The event will take place online and while tickets are free, booking is essential via eventbrite.

The RIA’s discourses are the oldest and most renowned series of talks in Ireland. The first discourses were presented in 1786. Historically, Academy discourses were the occasion reserved for the most distinguished academics to first reveal and discuss their work in public. Robert Mallet revealed his pioneering work on earthquakes and William Rowan Hamilton talked about quaternion algebra at Academy Discourses. Recent speakers have included Nobel Laureates, Venki Ramakrishnan, Amaryta Sen, William Campbell and Sir Paul Nurse. Other distinguished speakers were Mary McAleese, Catherine Day and Sir Stephen O’Rahilly. The purpose of the Academy discourse series is to bring thought leaders to the Academy to discuss important contemporary issues.

In this talk, Dame Wendy Hall will lay out why we need to take a socio-technical approach to every aspect of the evolution of AI in society, to ensure that we all reap the benefits of AI and protect ourselves as much as possible from applications of AI that might be harmful to society. Prof Barry O’Sullivan will respond.

Hall is Regius Professor of Computer Science, Associate Vice President (International Engagement), and is an Executive Director of the Web Science Institute at the University of Southampton. With Sir Tim Berners-Lee and Sir Nigel Shadbolt she co-founded the Web Science Research Initiative in 2006 and is the Managing Director of the Web Science Trust, which has a global mission to support the development of research, education and thought leadership in Web Science.