Kurzweil, Gelerntner, Joy face off

from the lack-of-agreement dept.
Ten thinkers argued on future technology last week at Carnegie-Mellon. Excerpts from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: The result, says artificial intelligence expert Ray Kurzweil, will be "total immersion virtual reality," a system in which an individual can be mentally transported to another world, or another body, where he can experience imaginary adventures with every sense…The things that are most important to people — families, communities, schools, religion — are only modestly affected, if at all by computers, emphasized Gelertner…Some limits need to be placed on the information that individuals can access, [Joy] said…To prevent the potential apocalypse Joy fears, "you'd basically have to stop all technological development," [Kurzweil] said, and that would likely require militaristic state control.