WHAT: Gods and Robots: Imagining Artificial Life in Antiquity Who first imagined robots and Artificial Intelligence? Long before medieval automatons, even before self-moving machines were invented in antiquity, the concepts of replicating life were explored in Greek myths about Talos, Jason, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, Hephaestus, and Pandora. Drawing on her book, “Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology,” Mayor discusses the timeless quest for artificial life, to show how automatons, self-moving devices, and Artificial Intelligence were imagined in antiquity, and how the ancients grappled with still-unresolved ethical concerns about biotechne, “life through craft”
WHO: Adrienne Mayor a research scholar in the Classics Department and History and Philosophy of Science Program at Stanford University, is the author of:
WHAT: Racism, Not Race: Answers to Questions Even a Skeptic Might Ask Racism created race. The socially defined racial groups we currently experience did not result from an objective examination of human biological variation. This talk recounts the study of biological variation and its connection to race concepts within the Western world from its roots in Christian special creationism to modern evolutionary ideas. It will end with a discussion of why anti-racism in science is now more than ever necessary to improve the modern scientific enterprise.
WHO: Dr. Joseph Graves, Jr. received his Ph.D. in Environmental, Evolutionary and Systematic Biology from Wayne State University in 1988. In 1994 he was elected a Fellow of the Council of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). In 2012, he was chosen as one of the “Sensational Sixty” commemorating 60 years of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Award. In 2017, he was listed as an “Outstanding Graduates” in Biology at Oberlin College; and was an “Innovator of the Year” in US Black Engineer Magazine.
His research in the evolutionary genomics of adaptation shapes our understanding of biological aging and bacterial responses to nanomaterials. He is presently Associate Director/co-PI of the Precision Microbiome Engineering (PreMiEr) Engineering Research Center of Excellence (Gen-4 ERC) funded by the National Science Foundation (2022—2027). His book on nanomaterials is entitled: Principles and Applications ofAntimicrobial Nanomaterials, (Amsterdam NE: Elsevier), 2021.
He leads programs addressing underrepresentation of minorities in science. He had aided underserved youth in Greensboro via the YMCA chess program. He has also served on the Racial Reconciliation and Justice Commission, and COVID Vaccination Task Fore of the Episcopal Diocese of North Carolina. He also served as the science advisor to the Chicago, New Brunswick, and Methodist of Ohio Theological Seminaries through the AAAS Dialogues of Science, Ethics, and Religion (DoSER) program.
WHEN: Thursday 12 January 7:30PM Pacific (0330 UTC Friday)
