LanCog is pleased to announce that the 2024 Petrus Hispanus Lectures will be delivered by Professor Susan Schneider (Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton), on June 25th and 27th.

Abstract

The topic of these talks is the Global Brain Hypothesis, according to which, in the near future, humans will become nodes in a distributed information processing network implemented through AI technologies. On this view, the AI ecosystem will feature ‘Emergent hyperintelligences’ arising from ‘megasystems’ of AI services. Humans, as users of AI services, are “nodes” in a larger algorithmic system that I call the computronium.  Eventually, parts of the system, fuelled by advancing generative models, global sensor systems, extensive amounts of users and data (including from brain-machine interfaces), become a ‘Global Brain system’. There may be several global brain systems competing for power (a multipolar system), two foes (a bipolar system), or a single hegemonic Global brain system. This hypothesis has unexplored philosophical implications in a wide range of areas, including: the extended mind, the nature of knowledge, chatbot ‘epistemology’, sentience (is the global brain conscious?), the metaphysics of the part/whole relationship of human nodes and how they relate to the computronium and global brain, and ethical considerations relating to the global brain—how to avoid a dystopia, ways the algorithms manipulate humans and what to do about it.

Lecture I

The Global Brain Argument: Nodes, Computroniums and the AI Megasystem

25 June 2024

16:00 (WET)

Anfiteatro II

Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon

Lecture II

Illusory World Scepticism and the Simulation Argument

27 June 2024

16:00 (WET)

Anfiteatro II

Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon

Free Attendance. No registration required. All welcome!