Economics Lecture: Artificial Intelligence and Cyber Security (18 Nov, 1.30pm)

CYBER SECURITY    1.30pm-2.30pm

How can citizens, businesses, and governments be protected from cyber threats? It’s not as complicated as you might think. Join Victoria to discover how cyber attacks happen, who cybercriminals are, and the steps we can all take to defend ourselves and others.

Prof. Victoria Baines is Professor of IT at Gresham College, the City of London’s oldest higher education institution. Her current series of lectures is Tech Change: A Survival Guide. Her areas of research include electronic surveillance, cybercrime futures, and the politics of security. She provides research expertise to a number of international organisations including Interpol, the United Nations, the Council of Europe and the European Commission. For several years, Victoria was Facebook’s Trust & Safety Manager for EMEA. Prior to this, Victoria led the Strategy team at Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre (EC3). She chairs the Security Panel of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, the IT Livery Company in the City of London.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - PROMISE OR THREAT?  3.00pm-4.00pm

Chris Rees will explain what AI is and in simple terms how it works. He will do the same for ChatGPT and other so-called Large Language Models, and will show what they are capable of and how they can help humanity, but also the damage they can do, accidentally or deliberately. Chris will discuss the economic implications, the ethical issues and the challenge of regulation. He will pose the question: Is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) coming?

Chris had a 55-year career in the IT industry. He led an AI unit in the 1980s, which developed the first fraud detection system for Barclaycard. He co-led a series of courses in the School on Philosophy in Business and co-authored a book, From Principles to Profit, (Duckworth, 2006). As President of the BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT, in 2018-9, he took The Ethics of AI as his presidential theme. He lectured and wrote extensively on the topic.

There will be a substantial opportunity for questions