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.
Art, Science and the Invention of Things That Last
Location: Building 20, Auditorium
Aesthetic Creation Aesthetic creation involves a close collaboration between discovery, invention and cultural exhibition, as well as between learning and producing value. It is typified by t ... more
Interfacing Sensors To Micro Controllers
Location: Bldg. 20 Auditorium
This lecture will cover the most common interface and interface techniques between sensors and microcontrollers. The presentation will introduce the pros and cons of each interface type including anal ... more
Swarm Robotics Lecture
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2325 ≤ 154
Swarm robotics is an approach to the design of multi-robot systems, which takes inspiration from social insects such as bees and ants. These insects modify their environments by moving resources to s ... more
Finding Shark Attacks in Data Streams
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
Finding Shark Attacks in Data Streams (Using Machine Learning to Detect Anomalies) In this lecture, Sebastian Steinke, a software engineer at KAUST who started to learn Machine Learning via self-dire ... more
Industry Research Teams in the Age of Intelligent Systems
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2325 ≤ 154
Make it or Break it: Industry Research Teams in the Age of Intelligent Systems In this lecture, A.I. researcher Luis Sarmento, will be focusing on a special type of research teams that are being crea ... more
Golden Ratio and Art
Location: Al-Khawarizmi East (Bldg 1), Visualization Core Lab (MPR 2418)
This lecture is an explanation of the Knowing How to See Exhibition and will be presented by Al-Khawizmi group, in particular by Professor Gabriel C. Wittum (CEMSE) and Andrea Baczynski (KAUST photogr ... more
Movability or Autonomy for Humans
Location: Bldg. 20 Auditorium
A human-centered approach to the design of smart robotic vehicles Contrary to the feverish promises of early 20th century futurists, the romance of the road has driven humanity down a dead end. ... more
Alumni Lecture Series
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
Join us for the annual Alumni Lecture Series, a highlight in the University’s event calendar! We welcome the return to KAUST of five alumni who’ll present highlights from their work in bu ... more
Video Conference Lecture by Robert Langer
Location: Building 19, Level 3, Conference Hall 3
Robert Langer is an Institute Professor at MIT. His h-index of 233 is the highest of any engineer in history and he has over 1,130 issued and pending patents worldwide and his patents have licens ... more
Human Machine Past in the House of Wisdom
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
Human Machine Past in the House of Wisdom: Learning for the Future A thousand years ago during Islamic civilisation, creative engineers imagined machines that both assisted and entertained ... more
Save the World with Nuclear Power
Location: Bldg. 20 Auditorium
Save the World with Nuclear Power The world needs a cheap, carbon-free alternative to fossil fuels to feed its growing electricity demand. Nuclear power can be a good solution to the problem, ... more
The Iris Project Presentation
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
Measuring Online Behavioural Advertising
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
Measuring Online Behavioural Advertising: The Tale of the Data Transparency Lab and Other Adventure In simple terms, behavioural targeting is segmentation based on customer behaviours. It provides th ... more
Golden Ratio and Art / M x M x M
Location: Bldg. 20 Auditorium
About this Lecture M x M x M- Music x Mathematics x Paintings: From Bach and Beethoven to the Golden Ratio and Fibonacci numbers visualized by contemporary Art M x M x M = Music x Mathematics x ... more
How AI Turned the Chess World Upside Down
Location: Bldg. 20 Auditorium
Man vs. Machine! In 1977 an IBM supercomputer 'Deep Blue' beat the reigning World Chess Champion Gary Kasparov in a 6 game chess match played under tournament conditions. This was the first tim ... more
A lecture by Pierre Magistretti and Yves Agid about the forgotten half of the Brain. Yves Agid will speak in particular about the role of GLIAL cells in normal and abnormal behaviors. We ... more
A Human Brain or a Supercomputer, Better Together?
Location: Bldg. 20 Auditorium
A human brain or a supercomputer, better together? Sunway TaihuLight is the fastest supercomputer in the world today. It can perform calculations at a rate of 93 petaFLOP/s where each 1 petaFLOP/s is ... 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
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
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
Intellectual Property: What is It and Why should I Care? 1/2
Location: Building 19, Level 3, Conference Hall 3
Intellectual property (IP) protection is essential to foster innovation. For the protection of important technology for commercialization, a strong and enforceable patent is required. Hence, scientist ... more
A 'smart city' is an urban region that is highly advanced in terms of overall infrastructure, sustainable real estate, communications and market viability. It is a city where information technology is ... more
Intellectual Property: What is It and Why should I Care? 2/2
Location: Building 19, Level 3, Conference Hall 3
Intellectual property (IP) protection is essential to foster innovation. For the protection of important technology for commercialization, a strong and enforceable patent is required. Hence, scientist ... more
The Role of Energy in Human-Machine Relationship and its Future
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
No machine can exist without energy supply, can it be fossil, mineral, renewable or human based. We will discuss how our modern societies are surrounded by machines most of us are not aware of, that m ... more
Sensing Earth Vibration with Seismic Networks
Location: Spine Auditorium between Buildings 4 & 5
How do Earth Scientists record and use seismic waves to detect earthquakes and image the Earth’ interior? The apparently “solid” ground on which we are standing continuously vibrate ... more
Visualizing the Human Machine Future Lecture 2
Location: WEP HUB (University Library)
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 effectively through photog ... more
The Rise of the Nanomachines
Location: Building 19, Level 3, Conference Hall 3
About this Morning Session Workshop During this workshop five female scientists will present their findings on design, preparation, and testing of nano-sized sensing platforms. The idea ... more
When Random Matrices Meet Machine Learning
Location: Bldg. 9 Lecture Hall 2322 ≤ 154
Today's machine learning is all about "large dimensional (p) and numerous data (n)", in sharp contrast with yesterday's "small p, large n" asymptotics paradigm. In this talk, we will show that moving ... more
