Terasem Colloquium in Second Life, December 10, 2016

Giulio Prisco
Turing Church
Published in
3 min readNov 24, 2016

The 2016 edition of the Terasem Annual Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons will take place in Second Life — Terasem sim — on Saturday, December 10, 2016.

There are two main themes: “Legal Aspects of Futuristic Persons: Cyber-Humans,” and “A Tribute to the ‘Father of Artificial Intelligence,’ Marvin Minsky, PhD.” This is a can’t miss event with stellar speakers and content. You are invited!

Note: this page was on turingchurch.com but it has been copied here because the turingchurch.com website is currently down for server works. New posts on the Terasem Colloquium will appear here.

SATURDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2016
10AM — 1PM PST / 1PM — 4PM EST / 6PM — 9PM GMT

In honor of International Human Rights Day and Dr. Marvin Minsky, the “Father of Artificial Intelligence.”

Terasem Island Conference Center in Second Life
[SLURL — click here to teleport to Terasem]

Conference Themes:
Legal Aspects of Futuristic Persons: Cyber-Humans
A Tribute to the ‘Father of Artificial Intelligence,’ Marvin Minsky, PhD

“He was the principal pioneer of both the symbolic and connectionist schools of AI and made profound contributions that have enriched the field of computer science and of all of science,” said Ray Kurzweil remembering the late Marvin Minsky (August 9, 1927 — January 24, 2016). “He was one of humanity’s great thinkers.”

The full conference program with speakers’ bios and abstracts will be published here soon. Stay tuned!

Each year on December 10th, International Human Rights Day, Terasem conducts a Colloquium on the Law of Futuristic Persons. The event seeks to provide the public with informed perspectives regarding the legal rights and obligations of “futuristic persons” via VR events with expert presentations and discussions. Terasem hopes to facilitate development of

“a body of law covering the rights and obligations of entities that transcend, and yet encompass, conventional conceptions of humanness.”

It’s more and more evident that humanity and technology will co-evolve, with organic life enhanced by synthetic biology and artificial intelligence, and artificial life powered by mind grafts from human uploads, blending more and more until it will be impossible — and pointless — to tell which is which. The first generations of futuristic persons — sentient Artificial Intelligences (AIs), human mind uploads, and hybrids — are coming, and it’s important to prepare the way.

Current-generation virtual worlds like Second Life are, of course, very primitive compared with the future virtual worlds where many futuristic persons will live. Next-generation platforms like Philip Rosedales High Fidelity and Linden Lab’s Project Sansar support immersive Virtual Reality (VR) headsets and interfaces, which is likely to trigger a new, massive wave of interest in virtual worlds. Come to the 2016 Colloquium in Second Life, and get ready for future Terasem events in next-generation virtual worlds.

You are invited! I look forward to seeing you in Second Life on Thursday, December 10, and I am available for live help.

Picture by Extropia DaSilva.

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Published in Turing Church

Science and religion, spirituality and technology, engineering and science fiction, mind and matter. Hacking religion, enlightening science, awakening technology.

Written by Giulio Prisco

Writer, futurist, sometime philosopher. Author of “Tales of the Turing Church” and “Futurist spaceflight meditations.”

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