An Afternoon Discussion: Artificial Intelligence: What is the Singularity?

DATE: April 29, 2008 @ Noon - 2:00 PM
LOCATION: Room 3082 Cushwa Hall


PRESENTATIONS
  • Clips from AI documentary
  • Panel discussion on AI consisting of PhDs from various departments

PANELISTS:

ARTIFACTS:
  • Program
  • Flyer
  • Photos
  • Video
  • Transcript/Summary
  • Podcast

Some Critical AI Questions To Be Covered:
  • Should we protect ourselves from “The Singularity” or control it?
  • Will it enhance, surpass or redefine human intelligence?
  • What technologies are more likely to achieve it?
  • Can we use it to improve the human condition?

Dr. John Sullins, computer science


John R. Sullins received the B.S. degree in computer science from M.I.T. in 1983, the M.S. degree in computer science from the University of Rochester in 1985, and the Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland in 1990. He has published in areas of artificial intelligence involving distributed symbolic learning and hybrid expert systems/neural network architectures. His current research involves the application of expert systems to customizable search engines. ...more

Dr. Alina Lazar, computer science


Alina Lazar is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Information Systems at Youngstown State University. She teaches courses in:

  • Discrete Mathematics
  • Visual and Object-Oriented Programming
  • Databases
  • Data Mining.
Her research interest is data mining applied to geographical information systems and also to content-based image retrieval. She likes to get undergraduate students involved in her research projects, especially women. She is also involved in the computer science department's outreach events for middle and high schools. In her free time she enjoys camping, hiking and skiing. ...more

Dr. Salvatore Attardo, Texas A&M Department Chair of Arts and Science: Computational linguistics


Salvatore Attardo holds a PhD in Linguistics from Purdue University. Trained as a computational linguist, he was involved in some of the early research that resulted in Ontological Semantics. He was also one of the godmothers at the birth of Computational Humor (the Enschede conference, in 1996) along with Doug Hofstadter, Victor Raskin, Oliviero Stock and Graeme Ritchie. Since then he has been involved in various computational humor projects, including HAHAcronym, a system that generates humorous acronyms. Attardo is the editor in chief of HUMOR: International Journal of Humor Research, the premier scholarly journal of humor research. He has published two books and numerous articles on humor, irony, and related subjects. He has also published in pragmatics and sociolinguistics. ...more

Dr. Mark Vopat, philosophy


Mark Vopat teaches philosophy at YSU and received his PhD from. ...more

Dr. Donna Sloan, religious studies


Dr. Sloan is on limited services (adjunct) faculty in the Department of Philosophy and Religious and Africana Studies Program. Prior to coming to YSU twelve years ago, she was adjunct faculty at Roxbury community College in Massachusetts. She has also had a diverse career in nursing, which includes Public Health, Psychiatric and School Nursing and she is an ordained minister. Dr. Sloan has masters in Public Health and Theology from Harvard. Her doctorate from Union Institute and University is in interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences with a focus in Religious Studies and Health Care Systems.