From: Joshua Fox (joshua@joshuafox.com)
Date: Fri Apr 02 2010 - 07:06:32 MDT
A call for papers from Prof. Amnon Eden.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Amnon <eden@essex.ac.uk>
TOPIC
Call for Papers: Technological Singularity & Acceleration Studies
Additional Details
http://freethoughtsweb.blogspot.com/2010/04/technological-singularity-and.html
Track in:
8th European conference on Computing And Philosophy — ECAP 2010
Technische Universität München
4–6 October 2010
http://www.cvl-a.de/ecap10
Important dates:
• Submission (extended abstracts): 7 May 2010
• ECAP Conference: 4–6 October 2010
Submission form:
http://www.cvl-a.de/ecap10/downloads/contribution-ecap10.pdf
THEME
Historical analysis of a broad range of paradigm shifts in science,
biology, history, technology, and in particular in computing
technology, suggests an accelerating rate of evolution, however
measured. John von Neumann projected that the consequence of this
trend may be an “essential singularity in the history of the race
beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue”. This
notion of singularity coincides in time and nature with Alan Turing
(1950) and Stephen Hawking's (1998) expectation of machines to exhibit
intelligence on a par with to the average human no later than 2050.
Irving John Good (1965) and Vernor Vinge (1993) expect the singularity
to take the form of an 'intelligence explosion', a process in which
intelligent machines design ever more intelligent machines.
Transhumanists suggest a parallel or alternative, explosive process of
improvements in human intelligence. And Alvin Toffler's Third Wave
(1980) forecasts "a collision point in human destiny" the scale of
which, in the course of history, is on the par only with the
agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.
We invite submissions describing systematic attempts at understanding
the likelihood and nature of these projections. In particular, we
welcome papers critically analyzing the following issues from a
philosophical, computational, mathematical, scientific and ethical
standpoints:
* Claims and evidence to acceleration
* Technological predictions (critical analysis of past and future)
* The nature of an intelligence explosion and its possible outcomes
* The nature of the Technological Singularity and its outcome
* Safe and unsafe artificial general intelligence and preventative
measures
* Technological forecasts of computing phenomena and their projected
impact
* Beyond the ‘event horizon’ of the Technological Singularity
* The prospects of various transhuman breakthroughs and likely
timeframes
Amnon H. Eden, School of Computer Science & Electronic Engineering,
University of Essex, UK and Center For Inquiry, Amherst NY (eden-at-
essex-dot-ac-dot-uk)
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