Yorkshire Philosophical Society

Event Information

Engineering the Future

The way we live, work and play is changing fast. Will technology make the world a better place, or is it a threat to our future lives?

Naomi Climer FREng FIET, will talk about positive potential applications of future technology such as the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence, and discuss some of the challenges such as cybersecurity and what happens to the future of work.

Naomi Climer is a Past President of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), her career has been spent in the Broadcast and Communications technology industry including senior roles at the BBC, ITV and Sony both in Europe and the US. An eternal optimist, Naomi will make the case for technology’s positive contribution to the future, but suggest that we all need to pay attention to where the tech is taking us.

Joint event with IET North Yorkshire

Member’s report

This stimulating lecture started with predictions of present day technology from about 40 years ago. Many of today’s driving forces were missed, such as 3.7 billion people and an amazing 50 billion ‘smart’ objects being connected to the internet. These require private information for maximum efficiency, which raises serious security, privacy and ethical issues. A concern is that the big internet companies are already too powerful. Computers will soon fully recognise voice communication and may even recognise thoughts by analysing involuntary neuromuscular signals. Current artificial intelligence (AI) systems such as driverless cars are narrow in scope, but future robots with more general AI could instantly learn from each other worldwide. Such robots would use the current biased raw data, and risk perpetuating discrimination by gender and race. Technology will greatly influence personalised healthcare, the quantity and quality of jobs, and also education – why teach facts that can be looked up on Google with a smart phone?

Rod Leonard