In preparation for the return of Science Cafe, which will discuss the technologies known as artificial intelligence, I thought it would be appropriate to ask a large language model, the chatty version of A.I., what kind of pizza we should provide.
LLMs base their responses on what they encounter after slurping up all the material as they can get their hands on, so it focused on the one type of pizza that gets argued about most often. In other words, it told me to order 50 pineapple pizzas.
Calm down, everybody of Italian descent; we won’t really do that. After all, nobody is dumb enough to blindly follow answers from an A.I., right? (Pause for laughter.)
But we will have pizza of various types — including pineapple because I like it — and a variety of beverages at Litherman’s Limited brewery for the return of this beloved institution. It’s set for Tuesday, Sept. 15, from 6 to 8 p.m. Free and open to all.
Science Cafe, as you may recall from its years in town before COVID squelched it, is a casual discussion in a bar about a serious topic. There aren’t many topics more serious than A.I. these days.
Will it bring Armageddon? Utopia? Great Depression 2.0? An economic revolution? More of the same but faster? Nobody really knows, but it behooves us to try to understand.
Science Cafe, as you may recall from its many past sessions, involves a couple of knowledgeable panelists at a table who answer questions from whoever shows up. It’s not a TED Talk wannabe; it’s a conversation.
An indication of A.I.’s sweep is the fact that neither of the two academic expert panelists for our session are anything close to computer geeks, even though they have been knee-deep in the topic of A.I. for years.
Nicholas Smith is a professor of philosophy at UNH, and James Dobson is a professor of English at Dartmouth College and director of the school’s writing program.
Yes, that’s right — they’re both in humanities departments! Yet as part of his work in the Future Leaders Institute at UNH, Smith held a summer camp for high schoolers called Governing Artificial Intelligence, while Dobson was a special advisor to the provost for artificial intelligence at Dartmouth, which has plunged more deeply into A.I. than any other Ivy League school.
That means their interest in the topic is at a pretty high level, which is fine by me. This won’t be an evening to discuss tips on creating good A.I. prompts to improve your business memos. It will be a time to try to understand exactly how A.I. works, what it does and doesn’t do, and the potential impact of this earth-shaking technology on life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The session starts at 6 p.m. but we’re hearing a lot of interest, so you might want to show up a bit early to get a table. The brewery is at 126 Hall Street in Concord.
This Science Cafe is slated to be a one-night stand. We are not returning to the old monthly schedule, although there might be more one-off events in the future.
However, other folks run similar sessions in New Hampshire. There are regular Science Cafes down in Nashua, and SEE Science Center in Manchester often holds Science on Tap events. Both of them have Facebook pages if you want to learn more.
In other words, if you like casual gatherings around serious topics, you have choices. With or without pineapple.
