Science on Screen®
Film / Lecture / Q&A
Saturday, June 3 at 7pm
From 'Her' to Here: ChatGPT & the New Age of AI
Companionship
with Anthony Zador, MD, PhD, and Kyle Daruwalla, Cold
Spring Harbor Labs
featuring a screening of HER
Starring Joaquin Phoenix & Scarlett Johansson
Members $10 / Public $15
Join us for a mind-expanding exploration of the brave new
world of AI, featuring a lecture by Anthony Zador, and a rare big-screen
showing of Spike Jonze’s prophetic 2013 classic HER.
Set in the Los Angeles of the slight future, Her follows
Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix), a complex, soulful man who makes his
living writing touching, personal letters for other people. Heartbroken after
the end of a long relationship, he becomes intrigued with a new, advanced
operating system, which promises to be an intuitive entity in its own right,
individual to each user. Upon initiating it, he is delighted to meet Samantha (Scarlett
Johansson), a bright, female voice, who is insightful, sensitive and
surprisingly funny. As her needs and desires grow, in tandem with his own,
their friendship deepens into an eventual love for each other. From the unique
perspective of Oscar-nominated filmmaker Spike Jonze comes an original love
story that explores the evolving nature--and the risks--of intimacy in an
increasingly technological modern world. Also starring Rooney Mara, Olivia
Wilde, and Chris Pratt. (USA, 2013, 126 min., color, Rated R, DCP)
Anthony Zador received his MD and PhD from Yale in
1994, where his focus was theoretical neuroscience and neural networks.
He then did postdoctoral research in synaptic physiology at the Salk Institute
in La Jolla, California. In 1999, he joined the faculty at Cold Spring
Harbor Laboratory in New York, where he is now the Alle Davis Harris Professor
of Biology and served as Chair of Neuroscience from 2008-2018. The goal
of his research is to understand the neural circuits underlying cortical
processing. His laboratory pioneered the use of rodents in complex
sensory decision tasks, and also developed a revolutionary approach to
determining brain wiring using high-throughput DNA sequencing. His current
research interests include applying neuroscience to usher in the next
generation of Artificial Intelligence.
Kyle Daruwalla is a NeuroAI scholar at Cold Spring
Harbor Lab. Previously, he completed his B.S. in Computer Engineering and
Mathematics at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, then his M.S. and Ph.D. in
Electrical Engineering at University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research brings
together perspectives from computer science, machine learning, and
neuroscience. Specifically, Kyle studies how evolution and neural development
can guide us to produce artificial intelligence that learns with less data and
fewer energy resources. Outside of the lab, he enjoys playing guitar,
woodworking, and hiking with his dog George. Watching George learn is a
constant source of curiosity and inspiration for Kyle.
An initiative of the COOLIDGE CORNER THEATRE,
with major support from the ALFRED P. SLOAN FOUNDATION



