January 14|25 2018
The future of blurred boundaries between humans and machines is a recurrent theme in science fiction. This future is today.
Join us for two weeks of discussions, lectures, workshops, exhibitions, and cultural and recreational events that will inspire our shared vision for a brighter, human-machine future.
Is the future human?
Sensors monitor our state, health and behavior, relaying this data to configure a digital signature that is as much part of us as our biometric traits. Fed at petabyte levels, our digital signatures allow increasingly powerful machine learning algorithms to learn from the continuous data streams we generate and anticipate our needs and behaviors as consumers.
Machine learning algorithms can increasingly mimic the function of our brain and will soon establish a direct interface that allows for the seamless control of robots. Robots are endowed with powerful sensorial capacities in order to interact with other humans, as well as their robotic avatars, through virtual networks that may eventually replace much of our human-to-human interactions.
While this human-machine future offers to bring about unlimited potential, it also creates risks—of losing our privacy and the social traits inherent to our human nature. We live in a world where machines are increasingly embedded in our everyday lives. Machines shape our individual identities, social interactions, and society as a whole. During the 2018 Winter Enrichment Program (WEP), we invite you to immerse yourself in a diverse and stimulating program, touching on the opportunities and risks of a future where the boundaries between machines and humans will become even more diffuse.
Present your best research during this year’s WEP KAUST Poster Competition. *This event is open to graduate students and postdocs. Interested in sharing your research with the grea ... more
Random Matrix Approach for Machine Learning 1/3
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
The field of big data processing is currently percieved as a crucial tool for many scientific disciplines, including signal processing, finance, biology... Significant progress has been achieved ... more
Al in Voice and Chat
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2325 ≤ 154
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping the way that humans interact with their surroundings. Scenarios that were previously in the realm of science fiction are all of a sudden becoming reality, wi ... more
Visualizing the Human Machine Future Exhibition - JAN 23
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
About this Exhibition This exhibition will focus on visualization from the viewer’s perspective and will showcase photographs and scientific illustrations. It will be dispalyed from& ... more
Knowing How to See Exhibition - JAN 23
Location: Al-Khawarizmi East (Bldg. 1), Entrance Hall
Photography is a Bridge Between Art and Mathematics The starting point of this exhibition is to translate the language and the insights of mathematics into photographic images and vice versa. ... more
KAUST is excited to present its annual International poster competition. Everyone is welcome to attend the exhibit as undergraduate students from around the world present their best research in a post ... more
Facebook On-Air Interview with Susan Polgar
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
The KAUST Facebook On-Air Series with Susan Polgar *Speaker to be confirmed Susan Polgar is a Hungarian-born American chess Grandmaster. She is famous for having been a child prodigy at chess, for b ... more
Creative Tactics for Communicating Science 1/3
Location: Spine Auditorium between Buildings 2 & 3
Communicating science has become an integral part of a scientist’s research cycle. According to UNESCO, there are more than 7 million scientists and researchers working in labs today -- an ... more
Learn more about what makes Conversational AI tick and what enables it to deliver all the magical applications that are now becoming commonplace, such as chatbots, intelligent voice assistants and con ... more
VR Lounge is Saudi Arabia’s first virtual reality (VR) gaming hub and lounge. What is VR? Well it’s rather quite simple; it’s a simulated environment in which a user is immersed thro ... more
Interactive Virtual Reality Art Exhibit: Google Tilt Brush - JAN 23
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
Paint Inside a Virtual World with Google Tilt Brush Virtual reality is at the frontier of novel human machine interfaces. At this interactive exhibit you can paint inside a virtual world. By e ... more
Tilt Brush Instructor Workshop JAN 23
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
Paint Inside a Virtual World with Google Tilt Brush Virtual reality is at the frontier of novel human machine interfaces. At this interactive exhibit you can paint inside a virtual world. By e ... more
Scaling Translation for a World with No Language Barriers
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2325 ≤ 154
The recent advances in Neural Machine Translation have the potential to revolutionise the way the world communicates and to eliminate language barriers. One of the main issues for any deep learning te ... more
The Iris Project - JAN 23
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
The Iris Project, a contemporary variant of a humanistic photography The Iris highlights the infinite beauty and diversity of people all around the world, as a human prism. Two ph ... more
Computer Numerical Controlled Vinyl Cutter
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
About this Maker Space Workshop Learn in 15/20 minutes how to transfer a graphic design directly onto a T-shirt with a computer numerical controlled vinyl cutter! Be sure to bring a one colored ... more
Showcase your science at KAUST! Every year during WEP, the Science Fair brings technology and science to the KAUST community and local schools. This is a great opportunity to come and learn about the ... more
Present your best research during this year’s WEP KAUST Poster Competition. *This event is open to graduate students and postdocs. Interested in sharing your research with the grea ... more
Simultaneous Chess Exhibition - 10 Boards!
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
Come and watch! Susan Polgar is one of the most famous chess players in the world. She and her two sisters were child prodigies and grew to be the best women players ever. Susan is recently ret ... more
KAUST is excited to present its annual International poster competition. Everyone is welcome to attend the exhibit as undergraduate students from around the world present their best research in a post ... more
Facebook On-Air Interview with Nate Hagens
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
The KAUST Facebook On-Air Series with Nate Hagens *Speaker to be confirmed Nate Hagens is a Professor at the University of Minnesota. Nate is a public intellectual who writes and speaks on the ... more
Visualizing the Human Machine Future Lecture 1
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
About this lecture In this presentation, research publications services will introduce how to visualize from the viewer’s perspective. You will learn how to communicate your science more effect ... more
Energy, Money and Technology - From the Lens of the Superorganism
Location: Bldg. 20 Auditorium
How will we react to the upcoming energy era? If we consider that a barrel of oil contains the same energy as 4.5 years of human muscle labor, our future access to energy will define what we ca ... more
About this event - four mandatory sessions plus a perfomance: This course will train a Festival Chorus for a short, on-campus performance during WEP 2018. The Festival Chorus will be prepared i ... more
About this Documentary * This movie projection is offered exclusively to KAUST community members and is suitable for the whole family. Garry Kasparov is arguably the greatest chess player who h ... more
