Artificial Intelligence: What is it? Is super-intelligence about to happen? Should we be concerned?

Date and Time: 17/03/2026

Professor Geoff Webb, Monash University

TelSoc has pleasure in announcing its first online event dealing explicitly with AI, to be held on Tuesday, 17 March 2026, from 12.30 p.m ADST.

We are honoured to have Geoff Webb, a leading expert in the field from Monash University as our speaker.

Geoff’s presentation will seek to demystify AI. He will not be concerned with AI policies such as the Australian Government’s National AI Plan released at the end of 2025, but will provide an accessible overview of how it works. He will tell us why he considers that super-intelligence is a long way off – and in the process will clarify some of the key terms used in discussion, including the notional of AI super-intelligence. He will finish his presentation by discussing some of the key concerns that we should all be considering as AI transforms our society, economy and lives.

As with all TelSoc lunchtime events, Geoff’s presentation will be followed by a Q&A session in which TelSoc members and industry colleagues will be able to raise questions and issues. Past experience suggests that these sessions can be incredibly interesting and informative. Given Geoff’s substantial and diverse experience, his presentation and participation in the Q&A will be well worth your time.


Registration Process:

  • Please fill in the “Register for this event” form on this page to RSVP for this event
  • You will receive a registration confirmation email with event details.

Date and Time: 

17/03/2026 | 12:30 pm

Register for this event:

Event registration form

Presenter(s):

Professor Geoff Webb, Australian Laureate Fellow, Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Monash University

Professor Geoff Webb, Australian Laureate Fellow, Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence, Monash University

Geoff Webb is an Australian Laureate Fellow in the Monash University Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence. An eminent and highly cited data scientist and AI researcher, he was editor in chief of the Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery journal from 2005 to 2014. He has been Program Committee Chair of both ACM SIGKDD and IEEE ICDM, as well as General Chair of ICDM and member of the ACM SIGKDD Executive. He is a Technical Advisor to machine learning as a service startup BigML Inc and to recommender systems startup FROOMLE. He pioneered multiple research areas as diverse as black-box user modelling, interactive data analytics and statistically-sound pattern discovery.  He has developed many useful machine learning algorithms that are widely deployed.  His many awards include IEEE Fellow, the inaugural Eureka Prize for Excellence in Data Science (2017), the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining Research Contributions Award (2024), the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining 10-year Highest Impact Award (2023) and membership of the Computing Research and Education Association of Australasia Academy.
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