Ed Keller, Bill Hibbard, Nick Land, David Weinbaum, Ben Goertzel.
The symposium explored the future possibilities of intelligence in the broadest way possible. What kinds of minds will future AGIs and robots possess? What kinds of collective intelligence will emerge among humans, cyborgs, robots, and AIs? What new types of complex self-organizing dynamics will arise, stretching beyond our current concept of “intelligence”? What will our current notions of “ethics”, “consciousness” and “creativity” look like from the perspective of 2050 or 2200?
The day featured a series of panels moderated by Dr. Goertzel and Prof. Keller, combining contributions of expert panelists with those of audience members. Five minute ‘lightning talk’ presentations by panelists were followed by discussions encouraging all participants and audience to develop a day long conversation.
Guests included Cosmo Harrigan, Natasha Vita More, David Weinbaum, Nick Land, Bill Hibbard, Reza Negarestani, Patricia Reed, Pete Wolfendale, Peter Watts, Ben Bratton, et al. Convened and moderated by Ed Keller and Ben Goertzel.
We partnered with The New Centre to host one day of their week long, parallel, #AGI seminar, and were joined by them in one panel. http://conversations.e-flux.com/t/live-blog- the-new-centre-2016-nyc-summer-residency-july-18-22/4077
SCHEDULE
9:30-10 AM: Workshop Introduction
10-11:15 AM: SESSION 1: The Future of the Individual: AGIs, Cyborgs, Uploads, and …
Epistemological horizons of the individual and collective mind. Rethinking the ethics and politics of mind beyond individual or gender.
◦ Panelists: Cosmo Harrigan, Natasha Vita-More, Amy Li, & by videolink Peter Watts
11:30-12:45: SESSION 2: Economies of Intelligence
The economics of intelligence; and the intelligence of economies. Continuing thoughts on the relation between emerging ‘radical economies’ and the role of cognitive & computational platforms. Infrastructure, complexity, collapse.
◦ Panelists: Ted Goertzel, José Cordeiro
12:45-2 – lunch break
2-3:15: SESSION 3: Ethics, Ethologies and Ecologies of the Emerging Global Brain
Non-anthropocentric models of cognition and intelligence. Blockchain and tech-ecology as platform for a ‘noosphere’. The absolute limits of the human. Critically unpacking various computational models and a broader definition of life and ecology. Addressing the human/non-human/alien relationship.
◦ Panelists: David Weinbaum, Nick Land, Bill Hibbard
3:30-4:45: SESSION 4: #AGI: Accelerate General Intellect
[organized with the collaboration of The New Centre]
◦ Panelists [TBC]: Reza Negarestani, Pete Wolfendale, Patricia Reed
Panel Abstract: What does it mean to accelerate the general intellect in the age of artificial intelligence? #AGI begins from the investigation of distributed networks from which thought assembles and into which it disperses. Unlike in the past, general intelligence, algorithms, and networks are together becoming as irreducible to the efforts of “universal” intellectuals as cultural and political movements have become to “universal” leaders. Will the future enable a more radical, integrated, but also more complex mode of cultural and political engagement? One predicated upon what Marx describes as, “the conditions of the process of social life itself… under the control of the general intellect.”*
#AGI explores the new intensifying developments in the field of AI that are making possible subjectless modes of the general intellect, more collective and more general than any single individual or network.
* Karl Marx, Grundrisse (London: Penguin Books, 1973), 706.
5:00-6:15: SESSION 5: Mind Beyond Mind
The relations linking radical invention, aesthetics, biological networks, and cognition. The Stack.
◦ Panelists: Vlad Bowen, Elliott Sharp, Ben Bratton [by videolink]
6:15-6:45 : Workshop Wrap-up