Robot Panelists, AI and the Future of Identity

Stephen Reed is the founder of Texai.org, which is a startup to create artificial intelligence. His approach is to first construct a bootstrap English dialog system that will acquire linguistic and commonsense skills to improve its own performance. Prior to forming Texai.org, Steve worked seven years at Cycorp, Inc., the creators of the Cyc Knowledge Base, where he managed several DARPA-sponsored projects.
His interests include: The Singularity, Artificial General Intelligence, AGI-suitable Computer Architecture, English Dialog Systems, Reading Comprehension, Knowledge Representation, Knowledge and Skill Acquisition, Learning, Hierarchical Control Systems, Automatic Programming, Robotics, Nanotechnology, and Life Extension.
Steve authored Mapping Ontologies into Cyc (with Doug Lenat), and Semantic Annotation for Persistence.

John is an interaction designer and ardent cultural observer who researches and writes about the mass adoption of digital tools. His work centers on the change digital technology is having on the way see ourselves and the we interact with each other. John is one of the earliest scholars of the digital afterlife. He started his research in 2008 and has written and presented extensively on the topic.

Bruce Duncan is the Managing Director of the Terasem Movement Foundation,Lincoln, Vermont. He is currently managing the Lifenaut Project which is exploring the creation of "mindfiles" and the transfer of human consciousness to computer avatars. He is also the Managing Producer of Terasem Media and Films, which recently completed "2B: The Era of Flesh is Over" a feature length science fiction film about society's reaction to the introduction of the first bio/tech hybrid humans. He lives with his family on the western slopes of the Green Mountains of Vermont.