Neil Blanchard wrote:
>I'm wondering if the new books by Kurzweil, Moravec and Gershenfeld have
>sparked more interest in the ability of machines to think in the
>academic communities. I know the books are primarily geared toward the
>layperson but I'm hoping this will make the academia think more this as
>a legitimate topic of research and inquiry.
Douglas Hofstadter is organizing a roundtable discussion at Indiana University related to the limits (or lack thereof) of machine intelligence. The objective of the roundtable is to elicit a discourse among various academic disciplines on the potential of artificial intelligence and its impact on human society. I am not certain if Hofstadter's effort is in response to any of the recent popular books on the subject. I've been promised a copy of the proceedings but I doubt there will be much in the way of new thinking or breakthrough viewpoints on the topic of artificial intelligence. However, I am interested in looking for what I call "efficacy creep", the often slow process of academia deeming a subject respectable enough to discuss in the coffeehouses.
Doug Bailey
doug.bailey@ey.com
nanotech@cwix.com