Will Electric Professors Dream of Virtual Tenure?

New computing inventions may exponentially extend researchers' productivity — and might even teach

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By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

Last month at the NASA-Ames Research Center, a group of top scientists and business leaders gathered to plan a new university devoted to the idea that computers will soon become smarter than people.

The details of Singularity University, as the new institution will be called, are still being worked out — and so far the organizers are tight-lipped about their plans. But to hold such a discussion at all is a sign of growing acceptance that a new wave of computing technologies may be just ahead — with revolutionary implications for research and teaching.

The idea that gave the new university its name is championed by Ray Kurzweil, an inventor, entrepreneur, and futurist who argues that by 2030, a moment — the "singularity" — will be reached when computers will outthink human brains. His argument is that several technologies that now seem grossly undeveloped — including nanotechnology and artificial-intelligence software — are growing at an exponential rate and thus will mature much faster than most linear-minded people realize. Once they do, computers will take leaps forward that most people can hardly imagine today. In The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (Viking, 2005), Mr. Kurzweil presents a utopian vision in which these supersmart machines quickly help human researchers cure diseases and vastly extend the human life span.

Plenty of academics think that's far-fetched. After all, early proponents of artificial intelligence made similarly bold promises decades ago that went unfulfilled. (Except the ones about computers beating human chess masters — that has actually happened.)

But let's say, for argument's sake, that Mr. Kurzweil is right, and that the animated Microsoft Office paper clip will become the next Einstein. Here are some predictions, based on interviews with researchers who believe that the singularity really is near, about how thinking machines would reshape campus life.

Computers Extend Brainpower

To understand what's coming, it's important to recognize how computers — and the Internet — have already revolutionized research and sped up developments in many fields, says Larry L. Smarr, a supercomputer expert who directs the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, a joint venture of the University of California's campuses in Irvine and San Diego.

"I can't imagine doing my research without Google — I don't remember how I did it," says Mr. Smarr, who attended the planning meeting for Singularity University. "I'm one or two orders of magnitude more productive today because of the global knowledge system the Internet has enabled."

As computers reach new heights, they will further extend that productivity, he argues. Perhaps we'll soon have machines recording everything we say, see, and hear, allowing us to retrieve experiences we now lose to forgetfulness. Superadvanced social-networking systems might regularly link us to like-minded colleagues to solve problems more quickly.

Computerized research assistants might even do some of the work that graduate assistants do today. Professors will be able to assign hundreds of these electronic assistants to problems without having to get grant money to pay them.

"We'll just become vastly more capable as human beings," Mr. Smarr says. "The whole fabric of how humans interact with each other and data is going to rapidly change."

Mr. Smarr has played a major role in building the online information systems we use today. He led the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign during the 1990s, when researchers there invented Mosaic, the first popular Web browser (which became the basis of Netscape).

The machines at Mr. Smarr's supercomputing center on the two California campuses keep getting faster and faster, while, let's face it, the human brain isn't getting any zippier. Although computers can outdo biology in sheer processing power, the real questions lie in whether machines can ever replicate the "multidimensional" nature of human intelligence, Mr. Smarr says. Your computer may never be your best friend, but it will be an amazing lab and research assistant.

Machines Become Teachers

Computers will become better at teaching than most human professors are once artificial intelligence exceeds the abilities of people, argues Ben Goertzel, director of research at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, in Palo Alto, Cal., a private organization promoting Mr. Kurzweil's ideas.

These new computer teachers will have more patience than any human lecturer, and they will be able to offer every student individual attention — which sure beats a 500-person lecture course.

Sure, one-on-one human teaching will always exceed a computer-student experience, Mr. Goertzel acknowledges, but what college undergraduate gets a personal tutor these days?

Virtual professors probably won't ask for tenure. And Mr. Goertzel sees them as key to expanding educational opportunities, by greatly reducing the price of a high-quality education.

Mr. Goertzel, who jokingly describes himself as someone who has read too many science-fiction books, was a professor at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas and other institutions in the 1990s before leaving academe in frustration with what he calls its "conservative research setting." He started his own software company, Novamente, in hopes of making enough money to embark on the kind of artificialintelligence research that he felt unable to pursue within the ivory tower.

Most of the biggest proponents of the argument for the singularity are entrepreneurs and others off campus. In fact, the idea for a Singularity University came from Peter Diamandis, who has started several successful companies along with the X Prize Foundation, which promises large cash awards to designers who break specified barriers. (In its first challenge, the foundation gave $10-million to a team that built a working commercial spacecraft.)

Singularity University would be modeled on another of Mr. Diamandis's creations, the little-known International Space University, a graduate-level training center to which NASA and other space agencies have sent students for decades.

Perhaps it is no surprise that some of the most optimistic visions of the singularity come from business leaders, since the new breed of computers will very likely make their inventors rich. But Mr. Goertzel and others chasing the dream of artificial intelligence say their primary motivation is social good, using machines to solve humanity's toughest problems, including the climate crisis and health issues. Their talk of the near future may sound like science fiction, but the stories have happy endings.

Or, Horrible Things Happen

What if the story ends differently, though? Anyone who's seen a Hollywood science-fiction film knows how smart machines could turn on us. In The Terminator, for instance, brilliant but emotionless machines set out to eradicate humans.

While those working to create Singularity University dismiss the notion that your laptop will turn into an Arnold Schwarzenegger-style villain, they do acknowledge that the new technologies — like every invention since the first tools to make fire — come with potential pitfalls. "They could be dangerous, that's absolutely true," says Tyler Emerson, executive director of the Singularity Institute. For example, if the technology falls into the wrong hands, it could aid terrorists or repressive dictators.

One goal of Singularity University appears to be to try to better understand the implications of smart machines before they get here, to minimize the downsides — to plan the future instead of waiting for it to wash over us.

"We can't face the future by trying to run away from these things," says Mr. Emerson. "Our species has always been pushing the boundaries."

And even if the biggest promises of artificial intelligence never come true, thinking seriously about their potential may help remind us what it means to be human, and what it means to pursue the biggest mysteries we face.

So hold on tight. And be nice to your computer. It's growing up fast.

College 2.0 explores how new technologies are changing colleges. Please send ideas to jeff.young@chronicle.com