Think of a world where autonomous vehicles take you to safely and swiftly to hospital, where autonomous diagnostic tools will instantly diagnose you and recommend surgery which will be undertaken immediately by autonomous surgeons achieving success rates far in excess of human treatment. In the meantime, your children will be taught by digital humans trained by the best and brightest teachers – each at their own pace. Society will be policed by drones, backed by algorithms determining where the next likely criminal events will occur. The legal system will use AI for dispute resolution and accountancy will be all but replaced by a digital accountant – and all cheaper, and faster, and more accurate.

Seem far-fetched? It’s not. We are fast approaching a time in which there will be wide implementation of Artificial Intelligence technologies in everyday life

This technology is polarising – Elon Musk and the late Stephen Hawking both warn against the perils of AI – that it could spell the end of humanity. At a minimum it is likely to cause mass disruption and removal of jobs to many sectors of the global economy. But the benefits are also stark.

Join us for an evening where you will get to hear discussion (and maybe a bit of debate) on the short to medium term impact of AI – maybe good, maybe not so good. What we do know is that it will have significant impact for people, businesses and society throughout the coming few years as we head to 2020.

We’ll be bringing together in each location a panel of speakers chaired by Tom Maasland from MinterEllisonRuddWatts’s a Partner specialising in Technology but also head of the firm’s Technology Innovation team.

We look forward to seeing you at this After5 event hosted by InternetNZ.

A reminder that you can arrive anytime after 5pm for a 5:30pm start of the formalities.