Keith Downing's Policy for Outside Lectures

I have been in the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for 40 years, and I have seen many ups and downs in terms of AI's popularity. The frequency of these cycles has increased recently, as new developments, like ChatGPT, arise and attract widespread international attention. During these upswings in AI interest, I and several of my colleagues are asked to give lectures on the topic to a wide variety of audiences.

In general, I greatly enjoy giving these types of lectures. They force me to think about issues beyond those of my daily teaching and research. I am very grateful for the opportunity to express my views to audiences of all backgrounds, from humanities to engineering, and to organizations in all sectors of society, from education to energy to telecommunications to labor organization to politics.

However, I do not have time to tailor lectures to each particular group. A decent lecture takes me 3-5 days to put together, and I simply do not have that kind of time for all of the lecture requests that I receive during these "peak AI times". Over the course of a year, I put together several new lectures, possibly based on requests from outside groups but primarily driven by my own interests and assessments of "what people may want to hear" or "what people ought to know" about AI.

So if you would like for me to give a talk to your organization, then I will only be able to consider your request if I am given relatively free reign to choose from among my existing set of lectures. These can be adjusted to any time limit that you give me, but I cannot easily add new content. Each such lecture is an hour or more in length but can be compressed down to as low as 10-15 minutes when required. This lecture set currently includes these topics (and a few others):

General introduction / overview of AI for non-technical groups - these general lectures touch on ethics, economy, cognitive effects of AI, etc. while also briefly introducing different approaches to AI.
General intro / overview of AI for more technical groups (i.e., those who do a decent amount of computer programming)
Ethical aspects of AI
The Ascent of AI: From Toys to Tools to Terror (This has a bit more focus on the potential dangers of AI, and a little less on AI techniques.)
Approaches to building AI systems with commonsense
The future of jobs in the AI revolution
Emergence of complexity in AI and Artificial Life (ALife) systems
Trends toward conformity and cognitive decline in an AI-driven world.

If your organization wants something else out of a session with me, then the best solution is to include either a long question-and-answer period after my lecture or a panel debate / discussion of some sort where topics germane to your organization can be taken up. I enjoy trying to address a wide range of problems in these dynamic settings, but I do not have time to prepare lecture materials on each such topic. I typically know very little about any given organization or their problems, so any attempt by me to address their issues in a formal lecture would be very time-consuming for me and yield fairly unsatisfying results for you.

I also do not have time for lengthy prepatory meeting and/or negotiations with organizations regarding my lectures. The easiest approach is to simply send me an email with a topic that you are interested in, the audience, the time and place, and the time limit. I can then tell you what I could give, usually from my lecture set. You can then decide whether you actually want my lecture or not...and if you want it, how you might incorporate Q&A or a panel into the session so as to address your organization's perspectives on AI, if that is desired. In general, I will have your group's interests in mind when I plan the lecture, but I will probably not have slides that directly address your particular issues.

I am sorry for this "process" surrounding my lectures, but there are just too many requests for all of us to handle during these periods of heightened AI popularity. In order to reach the most groups, I and my colleagues need to streamline things.