Instructors urged to schedule seats for students for 'Dawn or Doom' event

Instructors who have included sessions from the upcoming "Dawn or Doom" conference as assignments or credit for a class should let the organizers of the event know so that seats for the students can be reserved.

"We're pleased that many instructors have already contacted us to let us know that their students will be attending, and we will reserve some seats for those students," says Diana Hancock, director of commercialization for Information Technology at Purdue and organizer of the event. "We're anticipating strong attendance for many of the sessions, and if a room is filling up quickly we don't want to see students who have assignments turned away."

"Dawn or Doom: The New Technology Explosion" begins Monday (Sept. 15) with sci-fi movie showings on the lawn of Purdue Memorial Union at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m.

The main event begins at noon Sept. 18 with an "armchair discussion" about artificial intelligence and its role in society by author James Barrat and Gary Bertoline, dean of the College of Technology and executive director of the Purdue Polytechnic Institute. The discussion will be held in Stewart Center, Fowler Hall.

Following that event will be 17 afternoon presentations on the roles of various technologies in society. These afternoon sessions are followed by a keynote address by Barrat, "Can We Co-exist With Superintelligent Machines?," which will be at 5 p.m. in Fowler Hall.

The full schedule for the event is available at www.purdue.edu/dawnordoom/Schedule.

To schedule seats for students, email Hancock at hancockd@purdue.edu with the number of seats requested and the name of the class, and also request that the students in the class register for the event at www.purdue.edu/dawnordoom/Register.