The essay “Artificial Intelligence“, by professor Arlindo Oliveira, president of Técnico, published by Francisco Manuel dos Santos foundation, was presented this Wednesday, January 30th, at Técnico – salão nobre, followed by a fruitful debate on one of the most important subjects of the moment.

Mário Figueiredo, Técnico professor and IT researcher, presented the book and shared his admiration by the author: “You don’t have to know much about artificial intelligence to understand this book. You just have to be curious”. “This book is very well written and contains an impressive amount of information”, added professor Mário Figueiredo.

Professor Arlindo Oliveira highlighted that he enjoyed a lot writing this book, hoping that everyone who read it feels the same. “Intelligence is a dominant trait and the most intelligent species will rule the Earth. In the most optimistic view, the most intelligent species will dominate the galaxy”. “Intelligence is the most fascinating and important trait we know. All around us is the result of human intelligence”, he said next. The president of Técnico ended his speech stressing that “understanding intelligence, whether it is artificial or not, and where it may lead us, it is probably the great challenge of mankind because if we go extinct, it will be a result of intelligence”.

João Pedro Pereira, journalist of Público newspaper, moderated a debate that addressed a wide range of topics: the close connections between Philosophy and AI, what can AI get from neurosciences?, the evolution of AI in the last years and does intelligence require a body?.

When asked about the future and the things that we can expect to happen regarding AI, professor Arlindo Oliveira said “a high quality real time machine translation, 100 % accurate, will be a huge step”. According to professor Mário Figueiredo, “AI can excel at medical diagnosis, namely in medical imaging. 40 years from now the medical imaging as we know will no longer exist”.