New Mexico PBS Science Café Presents “Smartest Machine on Earth”

Repli­cat­ing the human brain is tougher than it looks, yet sci­en­tists are edg­ing closer with machines like Wat­son, an IBM super­com­puter so advanced it com­peted against cham­pi­ons on the pop­u­lar game show Jeop­ardy. Look­ing to the future, can we make a robot that really thinks, learns and acts like us?

KNME’s Sci­ence Café explores the “Smartest Machine on Earth” on Sat­ur­day, Nov. 17 from 10 a.m. to noon at the NM PBS/KNME stu­dio located at 1130 Uni­ver­sity Blvd N.E. Atten­dants will watch a seg­ment of a NOVA doc­u­men­tary and after­wards join in on a dis­cus­sion about the quest for arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence with Bran­don Rohrer.

Rohrer is a prin­ci­pal mem­ber of the tech­ni­cal staff at San­dia National Lab­o­ra­to­ries and is cur­rently research­ing bio­mimetic machine learn­ing, embod­ied cog­ni­tive archi­tec­tures and auto­mated exploratory robots. He has pur­sued this inter­est through mechan­i­cal engi­neer­ing degrees at BYU and MIT.

Sci­ence Café is designed for the entire fam­ily. Par­ents and grand­par­ents are strongly encour­aged to bring their bud­ding engi­neers and sci­en­tists along. Admis­sion is free, but a reser­va­tion is required. Seats are lim­ited and avail­able on a first come, first serve basis. RSVP to Rose Pos­ton, com­mu­nity out­reach coor­di­na­tor, at (505) 277‑2396 or by email­ing rposton@knme.org.

Sci­ence Café is pre­sented with sup­port from the UNM Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent for Research and Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment, Intel, and San­dia National Labs/Lockheed Martin.

For updates on the New Mex­ico PBS Sci­ence Cafés, and local and national sci­ence, nature and tech­nol­ogy pro­grams, visit the online com­mu­nity web portal.

Media Con­tact: Evy Todd, (505) 277‑1218; email: etodd@newmexicopbs.org.