Professor Michael Wooldridge delivers Faraday Prize Lecture at Royal Society

2 March 2026

On 18 February, Hertford fellow Professor Michael Wooldridge delivered his Michael Faraday Prize Lecture at the Royal Society in London.

The Michael Faraday Prize is awarded for excellence in science communication. Previous recipients include distinguished figures such as David Attenborough and Martin Rees, as well as Hertford’s own former Principal, Sir Walter Bodmer.

Professor Wooldridge’s lecture, titled ‘This Is Not the AI We Were Promised’, explored the capabilities and limitations of modern artificial intelligence. Emphasising that his talk was not a critique of AI, he described contemporary systems such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini as both remarkable and ‘quite marvellously weird’. While capable of achievements beyond the reach of most humans, these systems can also fail in surprising and unpredictable ways.

In the lecture, Professor Wooldridge contrasted large language models – which operate primarily through pattern matching over vast datasets – with what he termed ‘algorithmic intelligence’, in which computers compute precise, reliable answers to well-defined problems. He argued that, despite their power, current AI systems do not work in this way.

He further suggested that while modern AI tools may superficially resemble minds, they fall short of key criteria we would associate with rational intelligence. They are frequently inconsistent, struggle to revise beliefs coherently in light of new information, and remain fundamentally disembodied – lacking awareness of time, the state of the world, or meaningful engagement with it.

Professor Wooldridge concluded that understanding these powerful yet unusual technologies represents one of the central scientific challenges of our time, while learning to deploy them safely and effectively is among the foremost technological challenges.

The lecture was attended by several hundred participants and is available to watch online:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyyL0yDhr7I

Feature image credit: Paul Wilkinson