Beyond the limits of our intelligence

What if machines could match human cognitive abilities not just in narrow tasks, but across the full spectrum of intelligence?

This is the promise of artificial general intelligence (AGI), a concept that invites exciting possibilities but opens up a number of other questions:

• What pathways are there to achieving AGI?
• What milestones mark meaningful progress?
• How will we recognise when AGI has arrived?
• And what new opportunities – or challenges – might emerge once we get there?

In this discussion, DSI Visiting Professor and Professor of AI at the University of Bath Professor Nello Cristianini will join the DSI for a forward-looking discussion on the current state of AGI research.

Meet our speaker

Nello Cristianini is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of Bath
and the author of a trilogy on the age of intelligent machines, published by CRC Press
(The shortcut, 2023; Machina Sapiens, 2025; Superhuman – English translation forthcoming, 2026). Cristianini holds a degree in Physics (University of Trieste), a Master's in Computational Intelligence (University of London), and a PhD in Engineering Mathematics (University of Bristol). He previously held professorships at the University of California, Davis, and the University of Bristol. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the Data Science Institute LSE.

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