Hear two leading thinkers (and dynamic speakers) discuss the age of artificial intelligence and robots. As we stand (or sit) on the cusp of unprecedented change — the increasing integration of robots into modern society, including on the battlefield and on the road, in business, education, and health — John Markoff and Jerry Kaplan explore the potential avenues and consequences of this transition.

Those who design machines, and the associated systems for human interactions, have interesting opportunities. Man + Machine has many meanings and implications; come to PARC to hear from these experts about how they will most certainly change our economic future.

Presenters

Jerry Kaplan is widely known as a serial entrepreneur, technical innovator, bestselling author, and futurist. He co-founded four Silicon Valley startups, two of which became publicly traded companies. And is currently a Fellow at The Stanford Center for Legal Informatics. He also teaches Philosophy, Ethics, and Impact of Artificial Intelligence in the Computer Science Department at Stanford University. He holds a B.A. (1972) from the University of Chicago in History and Philosophy of Science, and an M.S.E. (1975) and Ph.D. (1979) in Computer and Information Science, specializing in Artificial Intelligence and Computational Linguistics, from the University of Pennsylvania.

John Markoff joined The New York Times in March 1988 as a reporter for the business section. He now writes for the science section from San Francisco. He has also been a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley School of Journalism and is an adjunct faculty member of the Stanford Graduate Program on Journalism. Markoff received the Loeb Award for business journalism with a group of Times reporters in 2005. And was awarded a Pulitzer Prize in explanatory reporting as part of a New York Times project on labor and automation in 2013. John Markoff grew up in Palo Alto, California and graduated from Whitman College, Walla Walla, Washington (1971) and received a Master’s degree in Sociology from the University of Oregon (1976).

—Event Producer