Over 50 years ago, the American philosopher Hubert Dreyfus was invited to evaluate the potential of an early artificial intelligence program from a social science perspective. While he acknowledged AI’s capacity to enhance organisations and societies, he argued that it could never replace human intuition, creativity, or our embodied and emotional engagement with the world.

Today, as organisations and entire societies race to develop and innovate AI technologies, we find ourselves in what can be called The Age of the Algorithm. In this new era, intelligent machines increasingly augment – and in many cases, replace – human work. Yet the algorithms that drive them often remain opaque, a ‘black box’ beyond the grasp of most.

The question is no longer whether we choose to engage with AI, but how we must adapt to its growing role across industries, professions and daily life. In particular, it is important to explore the effects of AI on practical reason and judgment.

If practical reason is concerned with the particulars, is affectively charged and teleologically driven, to what extent can it be automated? Can algorithms display practical reason, or is practical reason a property of embodied humans? And how can practical reason be used, in conjunction with AI, in organisations?

Amidst this rapid transformation, we must ask: what remains the role of human knowledge, judgement and practical reason in a world dominated by algorithms?

This research event will explore these pressing questions, revisiting Dreyfus’s original insights on what computers still can’t do – or, perhaps, what they now can.