UPDATE 9/9/07: I attended Saturday’s sessions, took copious notes, and am presently working on a writeup of my impressions and reactions. Photos are available here; unfortunately, my camera/limited photography skills and the dim theatre lighting did not play well together, and most of them were either too blurry or too dark. I tried to make them look cool anyway by adding color filters, but I am sure that other people will post much better ones at some point, if they haven’t already. I’ve decided that the next event I attend, I will stick to taking pictures of things like chairs, lighting fixtures, tiles, and plants (the best photo I took yesterday is one of some chairs in the auditorium).

I’ve always been interested in artificial intelligence, though admittedly from a “gee whiz, cool!” perspective as opposed to a more serious and rigorous one. I’ve enjoyed seeing how various AIs are portrayed in science fiction, and I did my senior project in college on neural networks, but in terms of the grand discussions over the feasibility, deserved attentional priority, and social implications of AI, I tend to find myself doing more observing than participating.I don’t buy into what my friend Dale would call “superlativity” (which tends to vastly oversimplify reality, sort of like how certain formulations of utilitarianism do), but neither do I dismiss the notion that something that meets at least some present criteria for an “intelligent machine” might come into existence at some point (I don’t think many people do dismiss this notion, including those who offer valid critiques of superlativity). Why not, after all? I tend to bristle at certain naive, neurotypically-biased constructions of “intelligence”, but if someone wants to define “intelligence” in terms of some behavior that they would like a program or computer to exhibit, then it does seem that they have a starting point for at least discussing possible implementations.

I’m extremely curious about the present state of research in this area. I want to expand my understanding of how AI might come into being, what things it might be able to affect if it did, and how it might engage in self-improvement processes. (Whenever I think about the idea of an AI being programmed and “raised”, say, in a virtual universe, I can’t help but wonder how something complex enough to be called an AI could possibly remain under the programmer’s control. It also isn’t clear to me how an AI of any type could “escape” from the confines of its computer infrastructure and affect change in the material realm. And, I tend to wonder what aspects we humans associate with “intelligence” are dependent upon embodiment, and interacting with matter and gravity and such in particular ways.)

My own attentional priorities are longevity/life extension and morphological/cognitive liberty, and I am not going to abandon these priorities for the sake of other ones, but considering that AI could potentially impact (or be affected by) both of my main topics of focus, it’s certainly worth a bit of study.

So, in the interest of learning more about the vast and complex field that is Artificial Intelligence, I will be attending the Singularity Summit tomorrow (9/08/2007, at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco, California. Tomorrow’s session goes from 9 AM to 6 PM, as does Sunday’s session (though I’ll only be attending on Saturday because I’m otherwise busy on Sunday). I imagine that it’s going to be very interesting, to say the least, and I plan to take lots of notes on my word processor, photograph what I can, and blog my impressions thoroughly afterward.

Date posted : September 7th, 2007 by AnneC Last Modified : October 15th, 2007 / Filed under : Feeds / Report a Concern Navigate : Previous post / Next post / Top of Page
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