From 19 September to 19 December 2023, more than 200 citizens took part in the five-part discussion series “LetsTalk100: AI for our future”. This series of debates addressed the role of artificial intelligence in our future society. The events took place outside the university at the Cercle Cité in Luxembourg City in order to emphasise proximity to citizens. The idea behind the debate series was also to bring together a large audience from academia, industry, government, media and the public.
Initiated and organised by Prof. Christoph Schommer from the Department of Computer Science (DCS) and moderated by Dr Nora Schleich, the 5 debates took the form of a dispute between two invited experts and the audience based on a given debate statement. While the two experts took on the role of proponent (yes) or opponent (no), the citizens had the task of shaping the discussion with questions and critically following the experts’ answers.
The five following debates took place with speakers coming from across Luxembourg and Europe, and from diverse areas of expertise:
- Generative AI as an opportunity for education?
- AI and medicine/healthcare: a promising togetherness?
- AI and arts: does this go together for an artificial creativity?
- AI and ethics hand in hand?
- AI for our future: are we on the right track?
A vote was held at the beginning and end of each debate to determine the audience’s position and obtain a barometer of opinion. In the areas of education, medicine and art, the audience was clearly in favour of the use of artificial intelligence, while opinions were more divided when it came to ethics and the current use of AI.
The series of debates was a PSP Classic project kindly financed by the FNR. Due to the extraordinarily good response and feedback, a continuation of the event is planned for 2024.
