{"id":2302,"date":"2025-03-07T11:13:21","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T11:13:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/chstm\/?p=2302"},"modified":"2025-04-16T11:53:47","modified_gmt":"2025-04-16T10:53:47","slug":"chstm-research-seminar-1-april-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.manchester.ac.uk\/chstm\/2025\/03\/07\/chstm-research-seminar-1-april-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"CHSTM Research Seminar, 1 April 2025"},"content":{"rendered":"

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1 April 2025, 4pm BST
Simon Building, Room 2.57 [maps and travel]<\/a>
https:\/\/zoom.us\/j\/99573779268<\/a><\/p>\n

Professor Thomas Haigh, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee<\/h2>\n

Artificial Intelligence: The Brand That Wouldn\u2019t Die<\/h1>\n

Abstract: <\/strong>The<\/span>\u00a0history of AI is\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0history of an overhyped intellectual\u00a0brand<\/span>\u00a0that has only very recently come to signify a set of deployable technologies with broad application and clear, if somewhat horrifying, purposes. Since its debut in 1955\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0AI\u00a0brand<\/span>\u00a0has been attached to a rotating cast of technologies with only loose connections to each other or to cognition, none of which has yet come close to delivering on\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0promise of creating computer systems with human-like\u00a0intelligence<\/span>. One AI insider characterized\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0story of AI as “the<\/span>\u00a0history of failed ideas.” Yet in\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0process of failing, early AI researchers made vital but incidental contributions to\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0development of computer technology and computer science. In this talk, Thomas Haigh will explore where\u00a0the<\/span>\u00a0AI\u00a0brand<\/span>\u00a0came from, why it was so attractive to researchers and sponsors, and how\u00a0artificial<\/span>\u00a0intelligence<\/span>\u00a0institutionalized as a subfield of computer science through research labs, curricula, textbooks, and professional associations. Haigh will also document continuities and discontinuities between our own moment and earlier cycles of AI hype and disillusionment.<\/p>\n

Thomas Haigh is a professor and chair of the history department at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. After studying computer science at Manchester University, he won a Fulbright award for a Ph.D. in the history and sociology of science from the University of Pennsylvania. He is the lead\u00a0author\u00a0of A New History of Modern Computing (2021) and\u00a0ENIAC\u00a0in\u00a0Action\u00a0(2016), both published by MIT Press. At UWM he runs a retrocomputing lab with working systems from the 1980s and 1990s. His current book project is Artificial Intelligence: The History of a Brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

All welcome!<\/p>\n

Seminar Series Convenors: Professor Carsten Timmermann and Dr Meng Zhang<\/p>\n

Seminar Programme on the CHSTM Website<\/a><\/p>\n

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Related<\/h1>\n

Related posts:<\/h3>
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Workshop: Climate & the Beginning of the Crisis Decades<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
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CHSTM Research Seminar: 31 October 2023<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a>
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Planetary Futures: Rethinking Extinction and Conservation in the Anthropocene<\/h2><\/div><\/div><\/a><\/div>
<\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

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