What we’re about
Welcome to the London History cafe!
This is a group for people who love history and love talking about it with others.
The format is simple: each event will have a topic (e.g the bombing of London in ww2) and some light reading/listening/watching materials (e.g a podcast episode, a chapter from a book…)
We’ll me up in a quiet pub and participants will have a chance to express what they find interesting about the topic, leading a Freeform discussion.
Upcoming events
3
AI and The End Of History
The White Swan, 21-23 Alie Steet, London, GBWhen ChatGPT appeared in our lives, my initial reaction was, “This is big.” A talking machine, at last. But there are many degrees of “big.” The invention of television was big; the Internet even bigger. Then there are the real game-changers, like modern medicine and the Industrial Revolution. And then, in our imagination, there are even greater degrees of “big.”
The question of just how big a change the “AI revolution” will bring to our lives has been on my mind ever since - not just how big, but in what ways, and over what time frame?
Luckily, some very smart people have written books and given lengthy talks speculating about just that, giving us an excellent basis for discussion.
Why History Cafe
You'll notice that this is the first event where we’ll be discussing the future rather than the past. One reason for that is that I think a historical perspective has a lot to contribute to this discussion. The other is that this is the only MeetUp group I run—so, there you go.Listening Materials
Please listen to at least the first item on this list. While we encourage free-form discussion and personal perspectives, it helps a lot to have some shared reference points.Geoffrey Hinton - Nobel-prize winning computer scientist
Nick Bostorm - Philosopher, former director of the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford
Yuval Noah Harari - Historian
Other interviews I haven't listened to yet:
Max Tegrmark
Eliezer Yudkowsky19 attendees
Past events
16
