AI is older and stranger than ChatGPT, and the most interesting AI of the next decade probably will not come from its loudest names. This talk argues that the public conversation has been having the wrong argument — not about whether AI works, but about which AI works, who is building it, and what cheap cognition does to a world built around expensive expertise. Drawing on Polanyi, Kahneman, Harlow’s monkeys, and Iain M. Banks’s novels, with stop-offs at agentic AI and an inherited library, guest speaker Jon Minton will take you on a tour of the contemporary AI landscape.

Jon Minton is a data scientist, statistician, and humanist based in Edinburgh, with a background spanning demography, sociology and software development. He shifted from disengaged AI sceptic to engaged participant in late 2025, prompted by the DeepMind documentary The Thinking Game, and by Claude Code’s achievements speeding up tasks with verifiable outputs.

Hosted by Humanists Online (Scotland) on Monday 4th May at 7.30pm on Zoom. Participation is free but we ask that you register via Meetup to receive joining instructions.

You are also very welcome to join the Humanist Pub Night in the back room of The Kenilworth Pub on Rose Street, Edinburgh on Wednesday 6 May from 7pm onwards.  This will allow people to meet informally and discuss the topics raised by the talk further if they wish to.