Hi to all,
This is Jack Semura.
I feel that many of us might be very interested in Cognitive Sciences
at Stanford Symposium. The symposium's title is "Will Spiritual
Robots Replace Humanity by 2100?"
Although it's being held
on April 1, this is a serious discussion co-sponsored by Cognitive
Science, Computer Science, Symbolic Systems, and Philosophy. They're
discussing some of the same questions that we have asked ourselves
and each other.
The session is organized
by Douglas Hofstadter (author of "Godel, Escher, Bach")
and will bring together well known scientists and computer scientists
including Ray Kurzweil, Hans Moravec, Bill Joy, John Holland, Ralph
Merkle, Kevin Kelly, Frank Drake, and John Koza.
The conference announcement
can be found at:
http://calendus.stanford.edu/CogSci/read/event_8268_CogSci_read.html
or try the current event page at:
http://www.stanford.edu/dept/symbol/
My best to everyone,
Jack Semura
Physics Department, Portland State University
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The following is taken from the conference announcement:
"In 1999, two distinguished
computer scientists, Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, came out independently
with serious books that proclaimed that in the coming century, our
own computational technology, marching to the exponential drum of
Moore's Law and more general laws of bootstrapping, leapfrogging,
positive-feedback progress, will outstrip us intellectually and
spiritually, becoming not only deeply creative but deeply emotive,
thus usurping from us humans our self-appointed position as "the
highest product of evolution".
"These two books
(and several others that appeared at about the same time) are not
the works of crackpots; they have been reviewed at the highest levels
of the nation's press, and often very favorably. But the scenarios
they paint are surrealistic, science-fiction-like, and often shocking.
"According to Kurzweil
and Moravec, today's human researchers, drawing on emerging research
areas such as artificial life, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology,
virtual reality, genetic algorithms, genetic programming, and optical,
DNA, and quantum computing (as well as other areas that have not
yet been dreamt of), are striving, perhaps unwittingly, to render
themselves obsolete -- and in this strange endeavor, they are being
aided and abetted by the very entities that would replace them (and
you and me): superpowerful computers that are relentlessly becoming
tinier and tinier and faster and faster, month after month after
month.
"Where will it all
lead? Will we soon pass the spiritual baton to software minds that
will swim in virtual realities of a thousand sorts that we cannot
even begin to imagine? Will uploading and downloading of full minds
onto the Web become a commonplace? Will thinking take place at silicon
speeds, millions of times greater than carbon speeds? Will our children
-- or perhaps our grandchildren -- be the last generation to experience
"the human condition"? Will immortality take over from
mortality? Will personalities blur and merge and interpenetrate
as the need for biological bodies and brains recedes into the past?
What is to come?
"To treat these
disorienting themes with the seriousness they deserve at the dawn
of the new millennium, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter has
drawn together a blue-ribbon panel of experts in all the areas concerned,
including the authors of the two books cited. On Saturday, April
1 (take the date as you will), three main speakers and five additional
panelists will publicly discuss and debate what the computational
and technological future holds for humanity. The forum will be held
from 1 PM till 5:30 PM, and audience participation will be welcome
in the final third of the program."