AI Boom or Doom? How People Can be Shepherds Rather than Sheep.
Join fellow retirees for this presentation on:
Wednesday, January 14, 2026 at 10:30 A.M.
Schlegel Village at University Gates,
Town Hall room,
250 Laurelwood Drive,
Waterloo, ON. N2J 0E2
FREE parking.
ChatGPT is being used on a weekly basis by more than 800 million people worldwide. AI boomers see artificial intelligence as having enormous benefits for business, government, science, education, medicine, art, and many other areas. But AI models also pose numerous threats to human well-being, concerning issues such as employment, privacy, creativity, mental health, personal relationships, misinformation, and even extinction, as AI doomers emphasize. This talk explains why AI is both extremely powerful and highly dangerous, and argues that government regulations are needed to direct AI toward satisfaction of human needs rather than supporting greed for wealth and power.
Paul Thagard, PhD, is a philosopher, cognitive scientist, and author of many interdisciplinary books. He is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Waterloo and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, the Cognitive Science Society, and the Association for Psychological Science. The Canada Council awarded him a Molson Prize (2007) and a Killam Prize (2013). His book, Dreams, Jokes, and Songs: How Brains Build Consciousness, was published by Oxford University Press in July, 2025. Another book on AI will be published by MIT Press: AI Boom or Doom? Philosophy and Psychology of the New Artificial Intelligence.
Event Cost and Registration
This event is FREE for University of Waterloo retirees and retirees of CURAC affiliated retiree associations.
Please register by submitting the following form.
(Capacity is limited to 50).