The SSEC Machine Intelligence Project

"It is all too evident that our moral thinking simply has not been able to keep pace with the speed of scientific advancement. Yet the ramifications of this progress are such that it is no longer adequate to say that the choice of what to do with this knowledge should be left in the hands of individuals." - Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, in the New York Times on 12 November 2005, the day he spoke to the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience. The technology of mind will have profound consequences for humanity, and humanity must be educated about and exercise collective, democratic control over this technology.
The Machine Intelligence Project at the Space Science and Engineering Center (SSEC) of the University of Wisconsin-Madison focuses on how to create machine intelligence, and on the social consequences of machine intelligence. My approach is to look for connections between neuroscience, the analysis of how human brains work, and computer science, the synthesis of artificial solutions to the problem of intelligence. The understanding of how intelligence works is critical for analyzing the social consequences of machine intelligence.

There are three great scientific questions facing humanity: how does physics work, how does life work, and how does intelligence work? An answer to the question of how intelligence works, and a consequent ability to build intelligent machines, will help answer the other two great questions and help solve many practical problems facing humanity.

Publications

Posters and Presentations

On-line Publications

More Information

For more information about the SSEC Machine Intelligence Project please contact Bill Hibbard.

Also see my Singularity Notes.