A Great Enchanted Garden: Can AI Give Us Back Our Sense of Wonder? – Ryan Avent at LJMU Exhibition Research Lab

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A Great Enchanted Garden: Can AI Give Us Back Our Sense of Wonder? – Ryan Avent

11 October 2018

Always double check opening hours with the venue before making a special visit.

A Great Enchanted Garden: Can AI Give Us Back Our Sense of Wonder? – Ryan Avent. Part of Liverpool Biennial 2018
A collection of zeros from the MNIST dataset, a large database of handwritten digits that is commonly used for training machine vision softwares.
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‘A Great Enchanted Garden: Can AI Give Us Back Our Sense of Wonder?’ is a talk by Ryan Avent (Senior Editor and Free Exchange Columnist, The Economist, Arlington, USA) curated by The Serving Library in partnership with LJMU’s Exhibition Research Lab for Liverpool Biennial 2018.

Industrialisation often deprived society of any sense of purpose other than increasing output and incomes, while modern economic growth pushes us to ever narrower specialisations that deny us a meaningful connection to our work. Progress built on advances in science and technology is relentlessly rationalistic, squeezing all the mystery out of the world while simultaneously reinforcing our individual unimportance within it. Today’s advances in Artificial Intelligence mean that much of how technology will work in future is entirely mysterious to all but a few experts (and maybe even them as well). AI is creating spirited creatures, like cars that drive themselves and robots that walk among us, and it is easy to imagine how that could all turn out to be ugly and dystopian, but this talk will suggest that there are perhaps ways to make it beautiful and affirming, too.

Where to go near A Great Enchanted Garden: Can AI Give Us Back Our Sense of Wonder? – Ryan Avent at LJMU Exhibition Research Lab

Everyman Theatre
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Liverpool Everyman Theatre

The Everyman Theatre on Liverpool’s Hope Street reopened in March 2014 after extensive renovation. It is twinned with the Playhouse on Williamson Square.

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The Pen Factory

From the team behind the old Everyman Bistro comes The Pen Factory, a warm and welcoming space situated in the basement of the Annex Building.

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With a large beer garden and commitment to using locally sourced produce, Free State Kitchen in Liverpool isn’t just-another-burger-joint.

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Abercromby Square in Liverpool was built as a communal garden for the rectangle of 19th-century houses that surround it.

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Vetch

Fine dining restaurant, serving beautiful food on Liverpool’s Hope Street.

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Zap Graffiti

Liverpool’s unique Graffiti encompasses a shop, studio, gallery and spaces for artists, and hosts workshops, murals, kids parties and classes.

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Frederik’s neighbourhood kitchen & bar has been the hub of the Georgian Quarter since 2013. Award winning cocktails and a great Sunday roast!

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