An Evening with Brian: “The Robot and the Single Cell”

Monday, June 11

Dinner, 5:30 p.m. Presentation, 7:00 p.m.

The news media are filled with reports of artificial intelligence (AI) and robots taking over the responsibilities of humans. Some have even said humans are shortly going to be made redundant. Yet consider the living cell: although we never hear spokespeople who say so, its capacity surpasses anything that robotics can achieve. Tonight’s review takes us through the contorted history of AI and compares it with what we now know single cells can do. The view of robots to the the cell is simply expressed: very artificial, not very intelligent.

A catered dinner preceding An Evening with Brian will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the McCrone Garden. View the Inter/Micro 2018 online registration form for pricing and registration.

About Brian J. Ford

When he is not speaking at Inter/Micro, Professor Ford travels the world as a keynote speaker and presents his work on television and radio. Ford is a leading authority on the microscope and a best-selling author, whose research is widely quoted in journals and encyclopedias. He is the author of the Critical Focus column, which has been published quarterly in The Microscope journal since 2010. In 2017, Ford was named an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society. He has served as a fellow of the Open University, fellow and president of past students at Cardiff University, visiting professor at Leicester University and a dining member of Caius College, University of Cambridge. He is also a fellow of the Society of Biology and president-emeritus of the Cambridge Society for the Application of Research. Ford has given his Evening with Brian presentations at Inter/Micro for more than 30 years.