Today: Artificial Intelligence and more

This House believes Artificial Intelligence research should be banned.

Congratumalations all round to the four debaters who managed to make what the judging panel worried would be a pretty turgid affair actually interesting. As we said in our closing comments today, the proposition were fairly clear-cut winners of this clash, due to their excellent command of the facts and an unfortunate loss of notes for their opponents.

Willem was warned to make his very intelligent insight more accessible to the lay person, but his definition of the motion, stuck to admirably by Ben and himself, was spot on. They could have brought the fundamental ethical dilemma of Artificial Intelligence more to the forefront of their arguments, rather than getting bogged down in the nitty-gritty, abstract and technical theories of the science of the topic, which, though important, saw them score an own goal by quoting I, Robot and The Incredibles as authoritative works of science.

Obviously, Hafsa’s lack of notes meant she was ill-equipped to make a four-minute speech, so the message for all debaters is just to have a hard copy, keep it safe, but also have it saved to your school user area. Rosa came out with some great points, but got lost at times in the proposition’s bombardment of points of information and rebuttal. Well done to the opposition, and it is quite clear there is a lot of potential among all four of today’s participants.

In other news... James passed his driving test today while we were considering the merits of Artificial Intelligence. So an additional “congratumalations” to him.

And don’t forget... it is election week next week, so please come to the sixth form vs. lower school debate in E6, at 2:45 on Tuesday and the political panel at the usual time and place on Wednesday. See you then.