Technological Singularity and Acceleration Studies: Call for Papers
April 9th, 2010 –
Amnon Eden, an organizer of the European conference on Computing And Philosophy, recently sent us this call for papers.
Track in:
8th European conference on Computing And Philosophy â ECAP 2010
Technische Universität Mßnchen
4â6 October 2010
Important dates:
* Submission (extended abstracts): 7 May 2010
* Notification: 9 May 2010
* ECAP Conference: 4â6 October 2010
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 âessential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continueâ. 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 âevent horizonâ of the Technological Singularity
* The prospects of transhuman breakthroughs and likely timeframes
Amnon H. Eden, School of Computer Science & Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, UK and Center For Inquiry, Amherst NY
Citing Stephen Hawking here is quite silly; we could call the fallacy “argument from irrelevant authority”. We might as well talk about “Einstein’s (1949) preference for socialism” or “George Bernard Shaw’s (1921) rejection of Darwinism”. Stephen Hawking’s opinions about machine intelligence should only be of interest to cultural historians, since they don’t derive from any sort of expertise. With respect to this topic he is just another layman.