Past, Present and Future of AI

We will review the key developments in the evolution of AI this century and how it has been applied to many products we use every day. We will explain the significance, in layman’s terms, of the transformers model and how it enabled the development of LLMs and ChatGPT. With that understanding, we will explore a variety of questions from a philosophical and psychological perspective. Why do we anthropomorphize instances of AI, and should we? Do the models really “understand”? What does it mean to “understand”? Why do they “hallucinate”? Is AI sentient? What does it mean to be sentient? We will review and discuss depictions of AI in modern films such as Her (2017), Ex Machina (2014), After Yang (2021), and Robot & Frank (2012).



Daren Gill is currently Senior Director of Product at Google focused on leveraging AI in the Search experience. He has been building ML-powered consumer software products for over 20 years at big tech companies, including Amazon, Spotify, and Google, as well as several startups. Daren is on the board of directors for Yobe, Inc., and is an advisor to Slang.ai. Daren has a J.D. and a B.A. from the University of Connecticut, and currently splits time between New York City and Block Island, RI./