Proposal to Establish World's First National
Artilect Research Association
(in Limerick, Ireland, May 2000)


I was invited in early May 2000 to give two lectures to Limerick University's Computer Science Dept on my work and artilect war ideas. Out of these talks came the following proposition - to establish the world's first national association for artilect research (based at Limerick University, Ireland).

At the end of both of these lectures I took a straw poll, asking the audience to vote on whether they thought humanity should build artilects (i.e. of massive intelligence, trillions of trillions of trillions of times above the human level, with all the risks involved of human species destruction by the artilects). The first talk was to 3rd year students. The second talk was to academic staff (postgrads and up). In both cases, the vote was roughly 50:50 Terran/Cosmist. This frightened me. If the general public in the future is equally split, then the war if it comes will be even more divisive than I had imagined. It looks as though the artilect issue will split humanity right down the middle. The most bitter wars are often civil wars, where the two sides have equal strength and are divided ideologically rather than geographically/culturally.


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Proposal to Establish the
Artilect Research Association of Ireland (ARAI)

J.J. Collins and Michael O'Neill (Lecturers)
Dept. of Computer Science and Information Systems,
University of Limerick
email: {j.j.collins | michael.oneill}@ul.ie

3rd May 2000


Mission Statement

We propose the establishment of the Artilect Research Association of Ireland (ARAI). The purpose of this association is to encourage research into Artilects and their core technologies, and to promote discussion of the social implications of this research. These goals will be realised by the plan outlined below.


Plan

  • Establish Artilect Research Association of Ireland (ARAI), based in the University of Limerick

  • Encourage research in evolvable hardware and social computing, through recruiting high calibre postgraduate MSc/PhD candidates.

  • Run an annual artilect focused workshop, in conjunction with Irish Annual Conf. on AI and Cognitive Science.

  • Promote ARAI through the Irish Association for Artificial Intelligence.

  • Seek funding through submission to Irish funding bodies. The Irish government is making 2 billion IEP available over the next five years for R&D.

  • CSIS will offer an advanced AI module to the fourth year undergraduates starting in Sept. 2000. We plan to devote a series of lectures to e-hard and social computing with the purpose of stimulating students interest in these areas.

  • Encourage final year undergraduates to pursue final year projects (FYPs) in the areas of evolvable hardware. ARAI would be willing to act as a coordinator for students in their interaction with Hugo.

  • Create a strong web presence for the association.



    ARAI Honorary Director

    Prof. Dr. Hugo de Garis


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