Educating the Atomic Human

Preserving the Human in the Age of AI

Neil D. Lawrence

UK Festival of Education, Wellington College

  • Human communication: walking pace (2000 bits/minute)
  • Machine communication: light speed (billions of bits/second)
  • Our sharing walks, machine sharing …

For sale: baby shoes, never worn

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

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If in this book harsh words are spoken about some of the greatest among the intellectual leaders of mankind, my motive is not, I hope, to belittle them. It springs rather from my conviction that, if our civilization is to survive, we must break with the habit of deference to great men. Great men may make great mistakes; and as the book tries to show, some of the greatest leaders of the past supported the perennial attack on freedom and reason.

Parallels with Climate
bits/min \(100 \times 10^{-9}\) \(2,000\) \(600 \times 10^9\)

Epilogue

Lawrence, N.D., 2024. The atomic human: Understanding ourselves in the age of AI. Allen Lane.
Scally, A., 2016. Mutation rates and the evolution of germline structure. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2015.0137