[agents] Call for Questions (Open Forum on Top10Qi)

[wic-office at wi-consortium.org]

Call for Questions
Open Forum on Top 10 Questions in Intelligent Informatics/Computing
(Top10Qi)
http://wi-consortium.org/blog/top10qi/index.html

World Intelligence Congress, Macau, December 4-7, 2012
http://www.fst.umac.mo/wic2012/

Background:

Sixty years ago, Alan M. Turing, raised the essential question, "Can
machines think?" in his article "Computing Machinery and
Intelligence", which can be regarded as one of seeds for AI and other
intelligent computing. He believed machines could think and also
believed that "at the end of the century the use of words and general
educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to
speak of machines thinking without expecting to be
contradicted". Actually, since the end of the last century, the
essential question has become "Can things think?" as proposed by the
TTT consortium at MIT.

Computer and networks have brought profound changes not only as
revolutionary information technologies but also a digital space for
creating a new world called cyberworld, whose impacts to our human
beings have just begun. Following the information explosion, we are
experiencing in connection explosion and service explosion. Sooner or
later we will face the next one - Intelligence Explosion! The initial
signs of such intelligence explosion have been appearing, such as Web
Intelligence (WI) as one representative development of Web, AI, agent
technology, neural networks, nature-inspired computing, cloud
computing and so forth, and Ubiquitous Intelligence (UI) because of
active media, sensor technology, embedded devices, pervasive
computing, smart objects, Internet of things, etc.

The Important Questions:

- Are we ready for the coming of the digital explosions?
- What are fundamental problems and grand challenges
  in dealing with these explosions?
- Can we identify the most essential questions to be brought
  in the Intelligence Explosion as did by Turing Sixty years ago?

Perhaps no single person can do all these, but the intelligence exists
in the crowd with their collective efforts. Therefore, the open forum
is trying to offer a common platform for all of us to work together to
think about the basic questions and further figure out Top 10
Questions in Intelligent Informatics/Computing (TOP10Qi).

Schedule

Top10Qi Open Forum will be organized with a series of events/outputs
by dividing into four stages:

1. Stage QC (Question Collection): Present ~ October 30

In this stage, we solicit questions from people around the world. No
matter what backgrounds and opinions, you are welcome to submit your
questions via Top10Qi website at: http://www.fst.umac.mo/wic2012/. A
set of social media tools, such as Blog, Facebook, Twitter, and
LinkedIn can be used by you to share your ideas and discuss various
issues with others. Top10Qi Working Committee will track what you have
submitted and discussed over different social media, summarize
questions, important opinions and other information, and provide the
latest progressing results on the Top10Qi website once a week.

2. Stage QV (Question Voting): November 01 ~ November 20

A whole list of all questions will be provided on the Top10Qi website
for voting. The vote will be conducted by crowd, i.e., people like
you, and Top10Qi Technical Committee is composed of intelligent
informatics/computing experts, respectively. Each person or technical
committee member can vote up to 10 questions. Therefore, two final
Question Voting Results (QVR) will be generated, namely, QVR-CP from
the crowd people (CP) and QVR-CM from the committee member (CM).

3. Stage QP (Question Panel): December 05

A Top10Qi panel will be held during the World Intelligence Congress in
Macau. In the panel, the detailed information and statistic data will
be first reported by the technical committee, and then two sets of Top
10 questions, T10QiCP and T10QiCM, will be announced. Also, Top 10
People who have the most questions in the T10QiCP and T10QiCM will be
announced. Next, invited Top10Qi Panelists will give their statements
and remarks on the Top 10 Questions. Afterwards, the panel will have
open discussions between panelists and all participants. The panel
will be lively broadcasted on the Internet, and everyone is welcome to
remotely join the panel and ask questions in the panel.

4. Stage QR (Question Report): December 10 ~

The Technical Committee under support of Working Committee will come
up a final Top10Qi summarization report about the forum, top 10
questions (T10QiCP & T10QiCM), panelists' statements, audiences'
comments, and other data including a whole list of questions
collected, their voting results, statistic data, etc. For each of the
top 10 questions, the report will list names of these who have
submitted question(s) in Stage QC. The report will be put on Top10Qi
website for open access.

Call for Your Participation

The success of the Top10Qi Open Forum will greatly depend on your
participation and voluntary work as well as your comments. Hence,
besides calling for TOP10Qi, we also sincerely call for your support
and joining the special event.

- Call for Comments and Suggestions
- Call for Working Committee Members
- Call for Technical Committee Members

If you have any comments or are interested in becoming a committee
member, please feel free to send an email (with a biography when
applying for a committee member) at top10Qi at gmail.com.