49. Don't Get Pulled Under by the AI Hype Wave

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” – George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1905. Our speaker, Tim Allen, joined Wharton Research Data Services in 2008, after working for local companies and starting a few of his own. He began programming at age six during a summer camp his mother won in a raffle. Tim currently serves as an organizer of the Philadelphia Python Users Group, DjangoCon US, and as a member of the Python Software Foundation and Django Software Foundation. Tim is an avid hockey fan, was the first person to sell real world items for virtual microcurrency long before Bitcoin, is an avid open-source contributor, and enjoys beating his head against brick walls (as demonstrated by his passion for coding, cycling in Philadelphia, and never-ending quest to get his cat to behave). A life-long Philadelphia resident, he graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1996 with an individualized major, "Computer Aided Information Acquisition." Congratulations, technologists! We have reached a new record for the height of the peak of inflated expectations with the hype surrounding "A.I." If you believe the recent press, "A.I." is going to be capable of everything, with some even talking of immortality. It is wonderful to be excited about new technology available to us, but this is at a level I have never seen in my career. There have been numerous lessons from the past that illustrate why we should avoid these levels of hype. Is "A.I." going to change everything? Tim doesn’t buy it, and in this talk, he’ll explain why. This presentation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/SZ0k0IFqmZw To learn more, go to: https://github.com/flipperpa/