We humans steer the future, not because we’re the strongest or the fastest, but because we’re the smartest animal on this planet. However, there are no reasons to assume that blind evolutionary processes have reached the physical limit of intelligence with us. Quite to the contrary, we have already seen how intelligent machines outperform the best of our kind on an increasing number of tasks, ranging from chess to the quiz show Jeopardy. What will happen when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence in a broader range of intellectual tasks and controls our destiny? Are we ready to make our final invention? And what is to be done from an ethical perspective?
On Saturday, you will learn about optimal universal intelligence, artificial neural networks, state and trends in artificial intelligence and a phenomenon called intelligence explosion. The Sunday will be dedicated to the future of life and philosophical/ethical considerations. The guest presentations aren’t fixed yet, but we will probably have talks by researchers from ETH Zurich, the University of Bern and the University of Oxford. (You can find the schedule of last year’s seminar at www.superintelligence.ch/Schedule.pdf and an introduction to the topic at www.inside-it.ch/articles/38971.)
Language: The whole seminar will be in English.
Background: No prior knowledge of the topic is required.
Lecturers:
Kaspar Etter, MSc ETH Zurich in Computer Science and young entrepreneur
Caspar Oesterheld, student in Computer Science at the University of Bremen
Preparation: Participants will have to read a paper for the case study on Saturday.
Place: Solothurn Youth Hostel (www.youthhostel.ch/solothurn)
Number of Participants: 20
