There are three interesting talks related to computer science happening at Town Hall Seattle this week. (While not free, talks held at Town Hall are normally $5 and you can almost always just get tickets at the door.)
The first is by the science writer George Dyson, author of a new book called Turing’s Cathedral, and a gifted and popular lecturer. This book shows how the crucial advancements that dominated 20th-century technology emerged from one computer in one laboratory, where the digital universe as we know it was born. Monday night, March 5, 7:30 — 9:00 pm. $5.
The other two are a double-header, on Wednesday, March 7. $5 for both.
The first, from 6:00 — 7:30 pm, is by Brian Christian, author of a book called The Most Human Human. This book relates his experience participating in the 2009 Turing Test. Through this, he discovered philosophical, biological, and moral issues raised by the Turing Test, and wonders: If computers can reason, what does that mean for the special place we reserve for humanity?
Following that is a talk from 8:00 — 9:00 pm by Katie Kuksenok, a Ph.D. student in Computer Science and Engineering at the UW who is building novel systems to improve the quality—and the user experience—of language-processing technologies. This talk is entitled Helping Computers Find Meaning They Lost in Translation.
RooseveltCS.org 