Michael Faraday Prize Lecture: This is not the AI we were promised
Join us for the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize Lecture delivered by 2025 winner Professor Michael John Wooldridge.
Contemporary AI systems like ChatGPT are remarkable. They appear to be confident, articulate experts that can turn their hand to anything we might care to ask them about. It is easy to be dazzled, and to conclude that the long-held dream of truly intelligent machines is no longer a dream but a practical reality. Yet these new AI behemoths present a conundrum. While on the one hand, they truly are remarkable, they manifestly fail many of the most basic tests of rational intelligence. For one thing, they simply don't know, and can't tell, what is true and what isn't. They are hopelessly inconsistent; they have no sense of their limits of their knowledge or abilities; they are comically suggestible; and they are easily steered to flights of surrealistic fantasy. AI researchers are busy inventing a completely new field of experimental AI to try to get to grips with these bizarre new artefacts. This is all the more surprising because it is so far removed from popular expectations of what AI would be like: remorselessly logical. So what are we to make of it all? How should we think about the new AI?
In his talk, Professor Michael John Wooldridge will l look at how the new AI works, and why as a consequence it exhibits these weird, frustrating, fascinating behaviours. He will show just how far the new AI is from classical expectations and talk about the next frontiers for AI - and how far we are from the dream.
About the prize
The Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture 2025 is awarded to Professor Michael John Wooldridge for award-winning work as a leading researcher, educator and commentator in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) whose popular science books, lectures and media appearances have informed millions.
Michael Wooldridge is the Ashall Professor of the Foundations of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Oxford. He has been an AI researcher for more than 30 years and is one of the founders of the field of multi-agent systems. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), the Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI) and is currently co-editor in chief of “Artificial Intelligence” journal. He has received the Lovelace medal from the British Computer Society (2020), the Patrick Henry Winston Outstanding Educator Award from the Association for Advancement of AI (2021), and the Distinguished Service Award from the European Association for AI (2023). In 2023 he was appointed specialist advisor to the House of Lords inquiry on Large Language Models. He has published two popular science introductions to AI: the Ladybird Expert Guide to AI (2018), and The Road to Conscious Machines (2020). He presented the 2023 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, broadcast by BBC TV over December 2023, in the 198th year of the series.
The Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize and Lecture is awarded annually to the scientist or engineer whose expertise in communicating scientific ideas in lay terms is exemplary. The award is named after Michael Faraday FRS, the influential inventor and electrical pioneer who was prominent in the public communication of science and founded the Christmas lectures at the Royal Institution. The medal is of silver gilt, is awarded annually and is accompanied by a gift of £2,500.
Attending the event
- The lecture can be attended in person at the Royal Society
- This event is free to join. Pre-bookable tickets will be available on Eventbrite from the start of January
- Live subtitles will be available in-person and virtually
- Doors will open at 6pm
Find travel and accessibility information on our website. Please email us with any access requirements or questions.
Attending online
- The lecture will also be livestreamed on the Royal Society YouTube channel
- You can take part in the live Q&A via Slido
- This event will be recorded (including the live Q&A) and will be available on YouTube shortly after the event
For all enquiries, please contact: public.engagement@royalsociety.org