In this episode of the iASK Podcast Series, Laszlo Karvalics, Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg, discusses artificial intelligence with George Tilesch, President at the PHI Institute for Augmented Intelligence California and the author of the book “Between Brains”. Together, they address academic and everyday discourses surrounding AI and outline the main concerns about its present and future. Tilesch stresses the importance of AI literacy, ethics, and critical thinking, and highlights the need for humans to adapt exponentially to the development and spread of AI. He suggests that we should delegate some of our autonomy to machines without being hijacked by AI. Tilesch criticizes the “terminator” discourse of the media and popular science, which focuses on the negative impact of AI, and instead encourages us to think about AI as a tool that scientists can use to enhance their work. He acknowledges that current AI systems are not yet capable of reasoning or understanding context. He stresses the importance of education and ethical applications of AI to secure a thriving future for humanity. He believes that we must strike a balance between innovation and regulation and emphasizes the significance of EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act, which defines AI broadly and considers its impact on society and fundamental rights of people. He suggests that we should focus on specific areas where AI can be put to best use, such as tackling climate change. Overall, Tilesch's message is clear: we must decide what AI should and should not do and work towards a world that we want to build together.

Podcast with Enikő Polyák, PhD student in the Doctoral School of Literary Studies, PhD Program in Hungarian and Comparative Literature at the University of Debrecen.

This podcast invastigates the connections between Kőszeg and Agota Kristof’s works. The city played an important part in the writer’s life and also in her novels. In the Trilogy, the city is only referred to as K. or Little Town, however it can be identified with the help of the geological descriptions in the text. Also, as the morals and ethics play significant roles in the novels the talk explores how it might relate to Slavoj Žižek’s interpretation and also to the trauma caused by the war and crises the narrators were faced with. The participants discuss the issues of language barrier, translations and the different experiences one can have reading the texts in Serbian, English, Hungarian or French. The Trilogy also raises an important question in connection with identity, which it seems can only constructed by wrinting and rewriting ones self over and over.

Podcast with Péter Poczai, Plant Geneticist and Research Director of the Finnish Museum of Natural History, researcher colleague of the iASK.

The podcast focuses on Imre Festetics and his memory in Kőszeg. Festetics argued that changes observed in the generation of farm animals, plants, and humans are the result of scientific laws. Festetics empirically deduced that organisms inherit their characteristics, not acquire them. He recognized recessive traits and inherent variation by postulating that traits of past generations could reappear later, and organisms could produce progeny with different attributes. These observations represent an important prelude to Mendel’s theory of particulate inheritance insofar as it features a transition of heredity from its status as myth to that of a scientific discipline, by providing a fundamental theoretical basis for genetics in the twentieth century. The podcast also explores the connection between Kőszeg and Peter Poczai the author the book “Heredity before Mendel”.

Podcast with Dr. Zsuzsa Márka research scientist (Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory, Columbia University in the City of New York)

Cataclysmic cosmic explosions, such as supernovae, colliding neutron stars and black holes, produce multiple distinct messengers such as gravitational-waves, neutrinos, and electromagnetic radiation. Their intertwined signature from a common cosmic source may reach our corner of the Universe at any instant. Enabled by new detectors, there is an unprecedented opportunity born of new data to expose these cosmic puzzles using multiple astrophysical messengers. At the root of discovery is an in-depth understanding of the multifaceted interplay between more sensitive instruments and innovative data analysis approaches relying on all accessible data from the comprehensive mesh of all detectable cosmic messengers. 'Can we tell that events are really related or they just happened to  overlap in time and space? ' is a common question not only in astrophysics but also in everyday life. We will use multimessenger astrophysics as an example and ponder over the concept of chance coincidence.