A few days ago I attended a lecture given by Gerfried Stocker, the artistic director of the Ars Electronica Festival. It was the first time I heard about the festival. The lecturer defined it as the festival of art, technology and society.
They are working on several projects but their main concern is a connected technology with the human body. The scientists do the technical things and the artists think how the human body responds to certain things, how humans can actually talk and communicate with machines. It is also a psychological study on machine usage.
The lecture was really interesting and though we didn’t look into any of their projects in depth, it got my attention. I’ve already looked and the next festival will be on the 6th sept.
At the end, we had the questions part. A lot of people mentioned and wondered about the ethical question about AI (artificial intelligence) and since I read a lot about that it was really really interesting.
After the talk I asked him a question directly which was:
” In a hypothetical world where all our brains are virtually connected and we can talk and exchange information with several people at the same time, where physical relationships no longer exist, where we don’t waste time cooking, going shopping, changing our babies diapers because there is someone or something that does that for us, where there is no traffic because all cars are connected, where mortality has been proven as a disease and has a cure… Is that the ideal world we are looking for? Is that the highest we could evolve? And if so, is humanity ready for all that?”
He answered me and we were still talking for a while but the most important things I got from his answer was that humans beings as we know them will change, definitely, which I completely agree. He also mentioned this thought that humans have that there is always something bigger, either it’s a god or a major force. And by that thought, the evolution moves towards a human who’s no longer human but a god itself.
Note: During the lecture, Gerfired also mentioned that scientists will become the new presidents and artists will become the new scientists. I just loved that statement!
Ars Electronica Festival ( Their official website )
