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163-454: University of Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom defines superintelligence as "any intellect that greatly exceeds the cognitive performance of humans in virtually all domains of interest". The program Fritz falls short of this conception of superintelligence—even though it is much better than humans at chess—because Fritz cannot outperform humans in other tasks. Technological researchers disagree about how likely present-day human intelligence

326-474: A Lord Chancellor of England and afterwards Bishop of Rochester , devised a series of regulations for college life; Merton College thereby became the model for such establishments at Oxford, as well as at the University of Cambridge. Thereafter, an increasing number of students lived in colleges rather than in halls and religious houses. In 1333–1334, an attempt by some dissatisfied Oxford scholars to found

489-404: A Pulitzer Prize in 1977, he was asked to write and narrate the show. It was targeted to a general audience of viewers, who Sagan felt had lost interest in science, partly due to a stifled educational system. Each of the 13 episodes was created to focus on a particular subject or person, thereby demonstrating the synergy of the universe. They covered a wide range of scientific subjects including

652-584: A full professor at Cornell in 1970 and directed the Laboratory for Planetary Studies there. From 1972 to 1981, he was associate director of the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research (CRSR) at Cornell. In 1976, he became the David Duncan Professor of Astronomy and Space Sciences, a position he held for the remainder of his life. Sagan was associated with the U.S. space program from its inception. From

815-487: A 'b ' ", in order to distinguish the word from "millions") made him a favorite target of comic performers, including Johnny Carson , Gary Kroeger , Mike Myers , Bronson Pinchot , Penn Jillette , Harry Shearer , and others. Frank Zappa satirized the line in the song "Be in My Video", noting as well "atomic light." Sagan took this all in good humor, and his final book was titled Billions and Billions , which opened with

978-407: A 16-year-old. Its chancellor, Robert Maynard Hutchins , had recently retooled the undergraduate College of the University of Chicago into an "ideal meritocracy" built on Great Books , Socratic dialogue , comprehensive examinations , and early entrance to college with no age requirement. As an honors-program undergraduate , Sagan worked in the laboratory of geneticist H. J. Muller and wrote

1141-534: A 2022 survey, the median year by which respondents expected "High-level machine intelligence" with 50% confidence is 2061. The survey defined the achievement of high-level machine intelligence as when unaided machines can accomplish every task better and more cheaply than human workers. In 2023, OpenAI leaders Sam Altman , Greg Brockman and Ilya Sutskever published recommendations for the governance of superintelligence, which they believe may happen in less than 10 years. In 2024, Ilya Sutskever left OpenAI to cofound

1304-493: A career goal: "That was a splendid day—when I began to suspect that if I tried hard I could do astronomy full-time, not just part-time." Sagan graduated from Rahway High School in 1951. Before the end of high school, Sagan entered an essay writing contest in which he explored the idea that human contact with advanced life forms from another planet might be as disastrous for people on Earth as Native Americans' first contact with Europeans had been for Native Americans. The subject

1467-513: A college and a PPH is that whereas colleges are governed by the fellows of the college, the governance of a PPH resides, at least in part, with the corresponding Christian denomination. The four current PPHs are: The PPHs and colleges join as the Conference of Colleges, which represents the common concerns of the several colleges of the university, to discuss matters of shared interest and to act collectively when necessary, such as in dealings with

1630-400: A college. The university does not have a main campus, but its buildings and facilities are scattered throughout the city centre. Undergraduate teaching at Oxford consists of lectures, small-group tutorials at the colleges and halls, seminars, laboratory work and occasionally further tutorials provided by the central university faculties and departments. Postgraduate teaching is provided in

1793-646: A diverse range of subjects. Facilities such as libraries are provided on all these levels: by the central university (the Bodleian ), by the departments (individual departmental libraries, such as the English Faculty Library), and by colleges (each of which maintains a multi-discipline library for the use of its members). The university's formal head is the Chancellor , currently Lord Patten of Barnes (due to retire in 2024), though as at most British universities,

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1956-409: A first-year examination that was heavily focused on classical languages . Science students found this particularly burdensome and supported a separate science degree with Greek language study removed from their required courses. This concept of a Bachelor of Science had been adopted at other European universities ( London University had implemented it in 1860) but an 1880 proposal at Oxford to replace

2119-423: A flashlight shining on a photoelectric cell , which created a crackling sound, and another showed how the sound from a tuning fork became a wave on an oscilloscope . He also saw an exhibit of the then-nascent medium known as television. Remembering it, he later wrote: "Plainly, the world held wonders of a kind I had never guessed. How could a tone become a picture and light become a noise?" Sagan also saw one of

2282-636: A former headmaster of Rugby School, was a key member of the Oxford Commission; he wanted Oxford to follow the German and Scottish model in which the professorship was paramount. The commission's report envisioned a centralised university run predominantly by professors and faculties, with a much stronger emphasis on research. The professional staff should be strengthened and better paid. For students, restrictions on entry should be dropped, and more opportunities given to poorer families. It called for an enlargement of

2445-663: A former student of Sagan, recalled "Sagan's immense contributions to planetary research, the public understanding of science, and the skeptical movement" in Skeptical Inquirer . Following Saddam Hussein 's threats to light Kuwait 's oil wells on fire in response to any physical challenge to Iraqi control of the oil assets, Sagan together with his "TTAPS" colleagues and Paul Crutzen , warned in January 1991 in The Baltimore Sun and Wilmington Morning Star newspapers that if

2608-449: A group which evolved into the Society of Oxford Home-Students and in 1952 into St Anne's College . These first three societies for women were followed by St Hugh's (1886) and St Hilda's (1893). All of these colleges later became coeducational, starting with Lady Margaret Hall and St Anne's in 1979, and finishing with St Hilda's , which began to accept male students in 2008. In

2771-664: A growing, man-made danger and likened it to the natural development of Venus into a hot, life-hostile planet through a kind of runaway greenhouse effect . He testified to the US Congress in 1985 that the greenhouse effect would change the Earth's climate system. Sagan and his Cornell colleague Edwin Ernest Salpeter speculated about life in Jupiter's clouds , given the planet's dense atmospheric composition rich in organic molecules. He studied

2934-663: A kind of "inner war" as a result of his close relationship with both his parents, who were in many ways "opposites." He traced his analytical inclinations to his mother, who had been extremely poor as a child in New York City during World War I and the 1920s, and whose later intellectual ambitions were sabotaged by her poverty, status as a woman and wife, and Jewish ethnicity . Davidson suggested she "worshipped her only son, Carl" because "he would fulfill her unfulfilled dreams." Sagan believed that he had inherited his sense of wonder from his father, who spent his free time giving apples to

3097-445: A library card. He wanted to learn what stars were, since none of his friends or their parents could give him a clear answer: "I went to the librarian and asked for a book about stars [...] and the answer was stunning. It was that the Sun was a star, but really close. The stars were suns, but so far away they were just little points of light. The scale of the universe suddenly opened up to me. It

3260-551: A major public fundraising campaign, the Campaign for Oxford . The current campaign, its second, was launched in May 2008 and is entitled "Oxford Thinking – The Campaign for the University of Oxford". This is looking to support three areas: academic posts and programmes, student support, and buildings and infrastructure; having passed its original target of £1.25 billion in March 2012, the target

3423-511: A member of the university, all students, and most academic staff, must also be a member of a college or hall. There are thirty-nine colleges of the University of Oxford and four permanent private halls (PPHs), each controlling its membership and with its own internal structure and activities. Not all colleges offer all courses, but they generally cover a broad range of subjects. The colleges are: The permanent private halls were founded by different Christian denominations. One difference between

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3586-628: A modest apartment in Bensonhurst. He later described his family as Reform Jews , the most liberal of Judaism's four main branches. He and his sister agreed that their father was not especially religious, but that their mother "definitely believed in God, and was active in the temple [...] and served only kosher meat." During the worst years of the Depression , his father worked as a movie theater usher. According to biographer Keay Davidson, Sagan experienced

3749-559: A new university at Stamford, Lincolnshire , was blocked by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge petitioning King Edward III . Thereafter, until the 1820s, no new universities were allowed to be founded in England, even in London; thus, Oxford and Cambridge had a duopoly, which was unusual in large western European countries. The new learning of the Renaissance greatly influenced Oxford from

3912-402: A path to ASI. Additional viewpoints on the development and implications of superintelligence include: The pursuit of value-aligned AI faces several challenges: Current research directions include multi-stakeholder approaches to incorporate diverse perspectives, developing methods for scalable oversight of AI systems, and improving techniques for robust value learning. Al research progresses

4075-501: A predominantly centralised fashion. Oxford operates the Ashmolean Museum , the world's oldest university museum ; Oxford University Press , the largest university press in the world; and the largest academic library system nationwide. In the fiscal year ending 31 July 2023, the university had a total consolidated income of £2.92 billion, of which £789 million was from research grants and contracts. Oxford has educated

4238-567: A reverence for the past, a code of honour for the present, which could not but be serviceable. He had enjoyed opportunities... of intercourse with men, some of whom were certain to rise to the highest places in the Senate, in the Church, or at the Bar. He might have mixed with them in his sports, in his studies, and perhaps in his debating society; and any associations which he had this formed had been useful to him at

4401-475: A rotating basis from any two of the colleges, are the internal ombudsmen who make sure that the university and its members adhere to its statutes. This role incorporates student discipline and complaints, as well as oversight of the university's proceedings. The university's professors are collectively referred to as the Statutory Professors of the University of Oxford . They are particularly influential in

4564-619: A school for gifted children, he has something really remarkable." However, his parents could not afford to do so. Sagan became president of the school's chemistry club, and set up his own laboratory at home. He taught himself about molecules by making cardboard cutouts to help him visualize how they were formed: "I found that about as interesting as doing [chemical] experiments." He was mostly interested in astronomy, learning about it in his spare time. In his junior year of high school, he discovered that professional astronomers were paid for doing something he always enjoyed, and decided on astronomy as

4727-462: A scientific viewpoint, nuclear winter was a low point for Sagan, although, politically speaking, it popularized his image among the public. The adult Sagan remained a fan of science fiction, although disliking stories that were not realistic (such as ignoring the inverse-square law ) or, he said, did not include "thoughtful pursuit of alternative futures." He wrote books to popularize science, such as Cosmos , which reflected and expanded upon some of

4890-463: A superintelligent system might be able to thwart any subsequent attempts at control. Even with benign intentions, an ASI could potentially cause harm due to misaligned goals or unexpected interpretations of its objectives. Nick Bostrom provides a stark example of this risk: When we create the first superintelligent entity, we might make a mistake and give it goals that lead it to annihilate humankind, assuming its enormous intellectual advantage gives it

5053-469: A survey of the 100 most cited authors in AI (as of May 2013, according to Microsoft academic search), the median year by which respondents expected machines "that can carry out most human professions at least as well as a typical human" (assuming no global catastrophe occurs) with 10% confidence is 2024 (mean 2034, st. dev. 33 years), with 50% confidence is 2050 (mean 2072, st. dev. 110 years), and with 90% confidence

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5216-563: A thesis on the origins of life with physical chemist Harold Urey . He also joined the Ryerson Astronomical Society. In 1954, he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts with general and special honors in what he quipped was "nothing." In 1955, he earned a Bachelor of Science in physics. He went on to do graduate work at the University of Chicago, earning a Master of Science in physics in 1956 and a Doctor of Philosophy in astronomy and astrophysics in 1960. His doctoral thesis, submitted to

5379-412: A tongue-in-cheek discussion of this catchphrase, observing that Carson was an amateur astronomer and that Carson's comic caricature often included real science. As a humorous tribute to Sagan and his association with the catchphrase "billions and billions", a sagan has been defined as a unit of measurement equivalent to a very large number of anything. Sagan's number is the number of stars in

5542-511: A topic of increasing discussion in recent years, particularly with the rapid advancements in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies. Recent developments in AI, particularly in large language models (LLMs) based on the transformer architecture, have led to significant improvements in various tasks. Models like GPT-3 , GPT-4 , Claude 3.5 and others have demonstrated capabilities that some researchers argue approach or even exhibit aspects of artificial general intelligence (AGI). However,

5705-486: A tremendous increase in the respectability of a then-controversial field. Sagan also helped Frank Drake write the Arecibo message , a radio message beamed into space from the Arecibo radio telescope on November 16, 1974, aimed at informing potential extraterrestrials about Earth. Sagan was chief technology officer of the professional planetary research journal Icarus for 12 years. He co-founded The Planetary Society and

5868-416: A way that enables substantial intelligence amplification. Some researchers believe that superintelligence will likely follow shortly after the development of artificial general intelligence . The first generally intelligent machines are likely to immediately hold an enormous advantage in at least some forms of mental capability, including the capacity of perfect recall , a vastly superior knowledge base, and

6031-488: A wide range of notable alumni, including 31 prime ministers of the United Kingdom and many heads of state and government around the world. As of October 2022, 73 Nobel Prize laureates , 4 Fields Medalists , and 6 Turing Award winners have matriculated, worked, or held visiting fellowships at the University of Oxford, while its alumni have won 160 Olympic medals . Oxford is the home of numerous scholarships, including

6194-437: Is 2070 (mean 2168, st. dev. 342 years). These estimates exclude the 1.2% of respondents who said no year would ever reach 10% confidence, the 4.1% who said 'never' for 50% confidence, and the 16.5% who said 'never' for 90% confidence. Respondents assigned a median 50% probability to the possibility that machine superintelligence will be invented within 30 years of the invention of approximately human-level machine intelligence. In

6357-742: Is coming to function like a global brain with capacities far exceeding its component agents. If this systemic superintelligence relies heavily on artificial components, however, it may qualify as an AI rather than as a biology-based superorganism . A prediction market is sometimes considered as an example of a working collective intelligence system, consisting of humans only (assuming algorithms are not used to inform decisions). A final method of intelligence amplification would be to directly enhance individual humans, as opposed to enhancing their social or reproductive dynamics. This could be achieved using nootropics , somatic gene therapy , or brain−computer interfaces . However, Bostrom expresses skepticism about

6520-483: Is made up of 43 constituent colleges, consisting of 36 semi-autonomous colleges , four permanent private halls and three societies (colleges that are departments of the university, without their own royal charter ), and a range of academic departments which are organised into four divisions . Each college is a self-governing institution within the university, controlling its own membership and having its own internal structure and activities. All students are members of

6683-573: Is morally right, relying on the AI's superior cognitive capacities to figure out just which actions fit that description. We can call this proposal "moral rightness" (MR)   ... MR would also appear to have some disadvantages. It relies on the notion of "morally right", a notoriously difficult concept, one with which philosophers have grappled since antiquity without yet attaining consensus as to its analysis. Picking an erroneous explication of "moral rightness" could result in outcomes that would be morally very wrong   ... One might try to preserve

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6846-448: Is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. Long before the ill-fated tenure process, Cornell University astronomer Thomas Gold had courted Sagan to move to Ithaca, New York , and join

7009-587: Is rapidly progressing towards superintelligence, addressing these design challenges remains crucial for creating ASI systems that are both powerful and aligned with human interests. The development of artificial superintelligence (ASI) has raised concerns about potential existential risks to humanity. Researchers have proposed various scenarios in which an ASI could pose a significant threat: Some researchers argue that through recursive self-improvement, an ASI could rapidly become so powerful as to be beyond human control. This concept, known as an "intelligence explosion",

7172-474: Is resulting in a slow, centuries-long reduction in human intelligence and that this process instead is likely to continue. There is no scientific consensus concerning either possibility and in both cases, the biological change would be slow, especially relative to rates of cultural change. Selective breeding , nootropics , epigenetic modulation , and genetic engineering could improve human intelligence more rapidly. Bostrom writes that if we come to understand

7335-472: Is to be surpassed. Some argue that advances in artificial intelligence (AI) will probably result in general reasoning systems that lack human cognitive limitations. Others believe that humans will evolve or directly modify their biology to achieve radically greater intelligence. Several future study scenarios combine elements from both of these possibilities, suggesting that humans are likely to interface with computers , or upload their minds to computers , in

7498-672: The Voyager Golden Record précis. During World War II , Sagan's parents worried about the fate of their European relatives, but he was generally unaware of the details of the ongoing war. He wrote, "Sure, we had relatives who were caught up in the Holocaust . Hitler was not a popular fellow in our household... but on the other hand, I was fairly insulated from the horrors of the war." His sister, Carol, said that their mother "above all wanted to protect Carl... she had an extraordinarily difficult time dealing with World War II and

7661-628: The English-speaking world and the world's second-oldest university in continuous operation . It grew rapidly from 1167, when Henry II banned English students from attending the University of Paris . After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk, some Oxford academics fled northeast to Cambridge , where they established the University of Cambridge in 1209. The two English ancient universities share many common features and are jointly referred to as Oxbridge . The University of Oxford

7824-597: The Examination Schools , where examinations and some lectures take place. The University Church of St Mary the Virgin was used for university ceremonies before the construction of the Sheldonian. In 2012–2013, the university built the controversial one-hectare (400 m × 25 m) Castle Mill development of 4–5-storey blocks of student flats overlooking Cripley Meadow and the historic Port Meadow , blocking views of

7987-628: The High Street is the oldest botanic garden in the UK. It contains over 8,000 different plant species on 1.8 ha ( 4 + 1 ⁄ 2 acres). It is one of the most diverse yet compact major collections of plants in the world and includes representatives of over 90% of the higher plant families. The Harcourt Arboretum is a 130-acre (53 ha) site six miles (9.7 km) south of the city that includes native woodland and 67 acres (27 hectares) of meadow. The 1,000-acre (4.0 km ) Wytham Woods are owned by

8150-606: The International Astronomical Union 's commission on "Physical Studies of Planets and Satellites" throughout the 1950s. In 1958, Sagan and Kuiper worked on the classified military Project A119 , a secret United States Air Force plan to detonate a nuclear warhead on the Moon and document its effects. Sagan had a Top Secret clearance at the Air Force and a Secret clearance with NASA . In 1999, an article published in

8313-482: The International Space Station at the expense of further robotic missions. Former student David Morrison described Sagan as "an 'idea person' and a master of intuitive physical arguments and ' back of the envelope ' calculations", and Gerard Kuiper said that "Some persons work best in specializing on a major program in the laboratory; others are best in liaison between sciences. Dr. Sagan belongs in

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8476-563: The Public Welfare Medal , the highest award of the National Academy of Sciences for "distinguished contributions in the application of science to the public welfare." He was denied membership in the academy, reportedly because his media activities made him unpopular with many other scientists. As of 2017 , Sagan is the most cited SETI scientist and one of the most cited planetary scientists. In 1980 Sagan co-wrote and narrated

8639-517: The Rhodes Scholarship , one of the oldest international graduate scholarship programmes. The University of Oxford's foundation date is unknown. In the 14th century, the historian Ranulf Higden wrote that the university was founded in the 10th century by Alfred the Great , but this story is apocryphal. It is known that teaching at Oxford existed in some form as early as 1096, but it is unclear when

8802-518: The catchphrase "billions and billions", although he never actually used the phrase in the Cosmos series. He rather used the term "billions upon billions." Richard Feynman , a precursor to Sagan, used the phrase "billions and billions" many times in his " red books ." However, Sagan's frequent use of the word billions and distinctive delivery emphasizing the "b" (which he did intentionally, in place of more cumbersome alternatives such as "billions with

8965-477: The observable universe . This number is reasonably well defined, because it is known what stars are and what the observable universe is, but its value is highly uncertain. Sagan's ability to convey his ideas allowed many people to understand the cosmos better—simultaneously emphasizing the value and worthiness of the human race, and the relative insignificance of the Earth in comparison to the Universe . He delivered

9128-465: The origin of life and a perspective of humans' place on Earth. The show won an Emmy , along with a Peabody Award , and transformed Sagan from an obscure astronomer into a pop-culture icon. Time magazine ran a cover story about Sagan soon after the show broadcast, referring to him as "creator, chief writer and host-narrator of the show." In 2000, "Cosmos" was released on a remastered set of DVDs. After Cosmos aired, Sagan became associated with

9291-582: The " steamboat ladies " to receive ad eundem degrees from the University of Dublin . In June 1878, the Association for the Education of Women (AEW) was formed, aiming for the eventual creation of a college for women in Oxford. Some of the more prominent members of the association were George Granville Bradley , T. H. Green and Edward Stuart Talbot . Talbot insisted on a specifically Anglican institution, which

9454-558: The 1950s onward, he worked as an advisor to NASA , where one of his duties included briefing the Apollo astronauts before their flights to the Moon . Sagan contributed to many of the robotic spacecraft missions that explored the Solar System , arranging experiments on many of the expeditions. Sagan assembled the first physical message that was sent into space: a gold-plated plaque , attached to

9617-469: The 1977 series of Royal Institution Christmas Lectures in London. Sagan was a proponent of the search for extraterrestrial life. He urged the scientific community to listen with radio telescopes for signals from potential intelligent extraterrestrial life-forms . Sagan was so persuasive that by 1982 he was able to get a petition advocating SETI published in the journal Science , signed by 70 scientists, including seven Nobel Prize winners. This signaled

9780-483: The 19th century included the replacement of oral examinations with written entrance tests, greater tolerance for religious dissent , and the establishment of four women's colleges. Privy Council decisions in the 20th century (e.g. the abolition of compulsory daily worship, dissociation of the Regius Professorship of Hebrew from clerical status, diversion of colleges' theological bequests to other purposes) loosened

9943-433: The 20th century, with the exception of St Antony's, which was founded as a men's college in 1950 and began to accept women only in 1962. By 1988, 40% of undergraduates at Oxford were female; in 2016, 45% of the student population, and 47% of undergraduate students, were female. In June 2017, Oxford announced that starting the following academic year, history students may choose to sit a take-home exam in some courses, with

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10106-474: The Burroughs novels. That same year, mass hysteria developed about the possibility that extraterrestrial visitors had arrived in flying saucers , and the young Sagan joined in the speculation that the flying "discs" people reported seeing in the sky might be alien spaceships. Sagan attended David A. Boody Junior High School in his native Bensonhurst and had his bar mitzvah when he turned 13. In 1948, when he

10269-624: The Chancellor is a titular figurehead and is not involved with the day-to-day running of the university. The Chancellor is elected by the members of Convocation , a body comprising all graduates of the university, and may hold office until death. The Vice-Chancellor , currently Irene Tracey , is the de facto head of the university. Five pro-vice-chancellors have specific responsibilities for education; research; planning and resources; development and external affairs; and personnel and equal opportunities. Two university proctors , elected annually on

10432-569: The Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, was entitled Physical Studies of the Planets . During his graduate studies , he used the summer months to work with planetary scientist Gerard Kuiper , who was his dissertation director , as well as physicist George Gamow and chemist Melvin Calvin . The title of Sagan's dissertation reflected interests he had in common with Kuiper, who had been president of

10595-456: The German armed forces, bearing the inscription, 'In memory of the men of this college who coming from a foreign land entered into the inheritance of this place and returning fought and died for their country in the war 1914–1918'. During the war years the university buildings became hospitals, cadet schools and military training camps. Two parliamentary commissions in 1852 issued recommendations for Oxford and Cambridge. Archibald Campbell Tait ,

10758-548: The Holocaust." Sagan's book The Demon-Haunted World (1996) included his memories of this conflicted period, when his family dealt with the realities of the war in Europe, but tried to prevent it from undermining his optimistic spirit. Soon after entering elementary school, Sagan began to express his strong inquisitiveness about nature. He recalled taking his first trips to the public library alone, at age five, when his mother got him

10921-748: The Laboratory for Planetary Studies . Sagan and his works received numerous awards and honors, including the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal , the National Academy of Sciences Public Welfare Medal , the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction (for his book The Dragons of Eden ), and (for Cosmos: A Personal Voyage ) two Emmy Awards , the Peabody Award , and the Hugo Award . He married three times and had five children. After developing myelodysplasia , Sagan died of pneumonia at

11084-942: The North ( northerners or Boreales , who included the English people from north of the River Trent and the Scots ) and the South ( southerners or Australes , who included English people from south of the Trent, the Irish and the Welsh ). In later centuries, geographical origins continued to influence many students' affiliations when membership of a college or hall became customary in Oxford. In addition, members of many religious orders , including Dominicans , Franciscans , Carmelites , and Augustinians , settled in Oxford in

11247-491: The Oxford Martin Principles. The total assets of the colleges of £6.3 billion also exceed total university assets of £4.1 billion. The college figure does not reflect all the assets held by the colleges as their accounts do not include the cost or value of many of their main sites or heritage assets such as works of art or libraries. The university was one of the first in the UK to raise money through

11410-419: The University of Oxford is long and includes many who have made major contributions to politics, the sciences, medicine, and literature. As of October 2022, 73 Nobel laureates and more than 50 world leaders have been affiliated with the University of Oxford. The university passed a statute in 1875 allowing examinations for women at roughly undergraduate level; for a brief period in the early 1900s, this allowed

11573-503: The ability to multitask in ways not possible to biological entities. This may allow them to — either as a single being or as a new species — become much more powerful than humans, and displace them. Several scientists and forecasters have been arguing for prioritizing early research into the possible benefits and risks of human and machine cognitive enhancement , because of the potential social impact of such technologies. The feasibility of artificial superintelligence ( ASI ) has been

11736-508: The age of 62 on December 20, 1996. Carl Edward Sagan was born on November 9, 1934, in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of New York City's Brooklyn borough. His mother, Rachel Molly Gruber (1906–1982), was a housewife from New York City; his father, Samuel Sagan (1905–1979), was a Ukrainian-born garment worker who had emigrated from Kamianets-Podilskyi (then in the Russian Empire ). Sagan

11899-555: The armed forces. By 1918 virtually all fellows were in uniform, and the student population in residence was reduced to 12 per cent of the pre-war total. The University Roll of Service records that, in total, 14,792 members of the university served in the war, with 2,716 (18.36%) killed. Not all the members of the university who served in the Great War were on the Allied side; there is a remarkable memorial to members of New College who served in

12062-469: The award-winning 13-part PBS television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage , which became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television until 1990. The show has been seen by at least 500 million people across 60 countries. The book, Cosmos , written by Sagan, was published to accompany the series. Because of his earlier popularity as a science writer from his best-selling books, including The Dragons of Eden , which won him

12225-400: The award-winning 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage , which became the most widely watched series in the history of American public television : Cosmos has been seen by at least 500 million people in 60 countries. A book, also called Cosmos , was published to accompany the series. Sagan also wrote a science-fiction novel, published in 1985, called Contact , which became

12388-711: The basic idea of the MR model while reducing its demandingness by focusing on moral permissibility : the idea being that we could let the AI pursue humanity's CEV so long as it did not act in morally impermissible ways. Since Bostrom's analysis, new approaches to AI value alignment have emerged: The rapid advancement of transformer-based LLMs has led to speculation about their potential path to ASI. Some researchers argue that scaled-up versions of these models could exhibit ASI-like capabilities: However, critics argue that current LLMs lack true understanding and are merely sophisticated pattern matchers, raising questions about their suitability as

12551-481: The basis for the 1997 film Contact . His papers, comprising 595,000 items, are archived in the Library of Congress . Sagan was a popular public advocate of skeptical scientific inquiry and the scientific method ; he pioneered the field of exobiology and promoted the search for extraterrestrial intelligent life ( SETI ). He spent most of his career as a professor of astronomy at Cornell University, where he directed

12714-677: The book The Cold and the Dark: The World after Nuclear War and in 1990 the book A Path Where No Man Thought: Nuclear Winter and the End of the Arms Race , which explains the nuclear-winter hypothesis and advocates nuclear disarmament . Sagan received a great deal of skepticism and disdain for the use of media to disseminate a very uncertain hypothesis. A personal correspondence with nuclear physicist Edward Teller around 1983 began amicably, with Teller expressing support for continued research to ascertain

12877-628: The book's 1997 motion-picture adaptation , which starred Jodie Foster and won the 1998 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. On it, everyone you ever heard of... The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in

13040-623: The central university. The Conference of Colleges was established as a recommendation of the Franks Commission in 1965. Teaching members of the colleges (i.e. fellows and tutors) are collectively and familiarly known as dons , although the term is rarely used by the university itself. In addition to residential and dining facilities, the colleges provide social, cultural, and recreational activities for their members. Colleges have responsibility for admitting undergraduates and organising their tuition; for graduates, this responsibility falls upon

13203-689: The challenge of controlling a superintelligent AI might be fundamentally unsolvable, emphasizing the need for extreme caution in ASI development. Not all researchers agree on the likelihood or severity of ASI-related existential risks. Some, like Rodney Brooks , argue that fears of superintelligent AI are overblown and based on unrealistic assumptions about the nature of intelligence and technological progress. Others, such as Joanna Bryson , contend that anthropomorphizing AI systems leads to misplaced concerns about their potential threats. The rapid advancement of LLMs and other AI technologies has intensified debates about

13366-513: The church was a requirement to graduate as a Bachelor of Arts, and " dissenters " were only permitted to be promoted to Master of Arts in 1871. The university was a centre of the Royalist party during the English Civil War (1642–1649), while the town favoured the opposing Parliamentarian cause. Wadham College , founded in 1610, was the undergraduate college of Sir Christopher Wren . Wren

13529-528: The city centre. The Science Area , in which most science departments are located, is the area that bears closest resemblance to a campus. The ten-acre (4-hectare) Radcliffe Observatory Quarter in the northwest of the city is currently under development. Iconic university buildings include the Radcliffe Camera , the Sheldonian Theatre used for music concerts, lectures, and university ceremonies, and

13692-692: The claim that current LLMs constitute AGI is controversial. Critics argue that these models, while impressive, still lack true understanding and are primarily sophisticated pattern matching systems. Philosopher David Chalmers argues that AGI is a likely path to ASI. He posits that AI can achieve equivalence to human intelligence, be extended to surpass it, and then be amplified to dominate humans across arbitrary tasks. More recent research has explored various potential pathways to superintelligence: Artificial systems have several potential advantages over biological intelligence: Recent advancements in transformer-based models have led some researchers to speculate that

13855-516: The classical requirement with a modern language (like German or French) was unsuccessful. After considerable internal wrangling over the structure of the arts curriculum, in 1886 the "natural science preliminary" was recognised as a qualifying part of the first year examination. At the start of 1914, the university housed about 3,000 undergraduates and about 100 postgraduate students. During the First World War, many undergraduates and fellows joined

14018-460: The colleges', is managed by the university's wholly-owned endowment management office, Oxford University Endowment Management, formed in 2007. The university used to maintain substantial investments in fossil fuel companies. However, in April 2020, the university committed to divest from direct investments in fossil fuel companies and to require indirect investments in fossil fuel companies be subjected to

14181-457: The credibility of the winter hypothesis. However, Sagan and Teller's correspondence would ultimately result in Teller writing: "A propagandist is one who uses incomplete information to produce maximum persuasion. I can compliment you on being, indeed, an excellent propagandist, remembering that a propagandist is the better the less he appears to be one." Biographers of Sagan would also comment that from

14344-578: The curriculum, with honours to be awarded in many new fields. Undergraduate scholarships should be open to all Britons. Graduate fellowships should be opened up to all members of the university. It recommended that fellows be released from an obligation for ordination. Students were to be allowed to save money by boarding in the city, instead of in a college. The system of separate honour schools for different subjects began in 1802, with Mathematics and Literae Humaniores . Schools of "Natural Sciences" and "Law, and Modern History" were added in 1853. By 1872,

14507-414: The departments. In 2017–18, the university had an income of £2,237m; key sources were research grants (£579.1m) and academic fees (£332.5m). The colleges had a total income of £492.9m. While the university has a larger annual income and operating budget, the colleges have a larger aggregate endowment: over £6.4bn compared to the university's £1.2bn. The central University's endowment, along with some of

14670-526: The early 19th century, the curriculum at Oxford was notoriously narrow and impractical. Sir Spencer Walpole , a historian of contemporary Britain and a senior government official, had not attended any university. He said, "Few medical men, few solicitors, few persons intended for commerce or trade, ever dreamed of passing through a university career." He quoted the Oxford University Commissioners in 1852 stating: "The education imparted at Oxford

14833-421: The early 20th century, Oxford and Cambridge were widely perceived to be bastions of male privilege ; however, the integration of women into Oxford moved forward during the First World War. In 1916 women were admitted as medical students on a par with men, and in 1917 the university accepted financial responsibility for women's examinations. On 7 October 1920 women became eligible for admission as full members of

14996-490: The effects of nuclear war , when Paul Crutzen 's "Twilight at Noon" concept suggested that a substantial nuclear exchange could trigger a nuclear twilight and upset the delicate balance of life on Earth by cooling the surface. In 1983 he was one of five authors—the "S"—in the follow-up "TTAPS" model (as the research article came to be known), which contained the first use of the term " nuclear winter ", which his colleague Richard P. Turco had coined. In 1984 he co-authored

15159-400: The external world. These examples highlight the potential for catastrophic outcomes even when an ASI is not explicitly designed to be harmful, underscoring the critical importance of precise goal specification and alignment. Researchers have proposed various approaches to mitigate risks associated with ASI: Despite these proposed strategies, some experts, such as Roman Yampolskiy, argue that

15322-506: The fair's most publicized events: the burial at Flushing Meadows of a time capsule , which contained mementos from the 1930s to be recovered by Earth's descendants in a future millennium. Davidson wrote that this "thrilled Carl." As an adult, inspired by his memories of the World's Fair, Sagan and his colleagues would create similar time capsules to be sent out into the galaxy: the Pioneer plaque and

15485-471: The fires were left to burn over a period of several months, enough smoke from the 600 or so 1991 Kuwaiti oil fires "might get so high as to disrupt agriculture in much of South Asia ..." and that this possibility should "affect the war plans"; these claims were also the subject of a televised debate between Sagan and physicist Fred Singer on January 22, aired on the ABC News program Nightline . In

15648-399: The first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control. This scenario presents the AI control problem: how to create an ASI that will benefit humanity while avoiding unintended harmful consequences. Eliezer Yudkowsky argues that solving this problem is crucial before ASI is developed, as

15811-407: The fossil fuel industry between 2010 and 2015, £18.8 million between 2015 and 2020 and £1.6 million between 2020 and 2021. Carl Sagan Carl Edward Sagan ( / ˈ s eɪ ɡ ən / ; SAY -gən ; November 9, 1934 – December 20, 1996) was an American astronomer , planetary scientist and science communicator . His best known scientific contribution is his research on

15974-480: The genetic component of intelligence, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis could be used to select for embryos with as much as 4 points of IQ gain (if one embryo is selected out of two), or with larger gains (e.g., up to 24.3 IQ points gained if one embryo is selected out of 1000). If this process is iterated over many generations, the gains could be an order of magnitude improvement. Bostrom suggests that deriving new gametes from embryonic stem cells could be used to iterate

16137-436: The hands of the merchants and the artisans. This tendency found its most effective advocate in a follower of Pythagoras named Plato" and He (Plato) believed that ideas were far more real than the natural world . He advised the astronomers not to waste their time observing the stars and planets. It was better, he believed, just to think about them. Plato expressed hostility to observation and experiment. He taught contempt for

16300-609: The history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. ... Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Sagan wrote a sequel to Cosmos , Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space , which was selected as a notable book of 1995 by The New York Times . He appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose program in January 1995. Sagan also wrote

16463-553: The hypothesis, which has since been accepted, that the high surface temperatures of Venus are the result of the greenhouse effect . Initially an assistant professor at Harvard , Sagan later moved to Cornell University , where he spent most of his career. He published more than 600 scientific papers and articles and was author, co-author or editor of more than 20 books. He wrote many popular science books, such as The Dragons of Eden , Broca's Brain , Pale Blue Dot and The Demon-Haunted World . He also co-wrote and narrated

16626-499: The ideas of others for little more than self-promotion. An advisor from his years as an undergraduate student, Harold Urey , wrote a letter to the tenure committee recommending strongly against tenure for Sagan. Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all

16789-623: The imperialist Cecil Rhodes in 1902. In 1996 a donation of £20 million was received from Wafic Saïd who was involved in the Al-Yammah arms deal , and taking £150 million from the US billionaire businessman Stephen A. Schwarzman in 2019. The university has defended its decisions saying it "takes legal, ethical and reputational issues into consideration". The university has also faced criticism, as noted above, over its decision to accept donations from fossil fuel companies having received £21.8 million from

16952-563: The institution. Sagan instead asked to be made an assistant professor, and eventually Whipple and Menzel were able to convince Harvard to offer Sagan the assistant professor position he requested. Sagan lectured, performed research, and advised graduate students at the institution from 1963 until 1968, as well as working at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory , also located in Cambridge, Massachusetts . In 1968, Sagan

17115-473: The intention that this will equalise rates of firsts awarded to women and men at Oxford. That same summer, maths and computer science tests were extended by 15 minutes, in a bid to see if female student scores would improve. The detective novel Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers , herself one of the first women to gain an academic degree from Oxford, is largely set in the all-female Shrewsbury College, Oxford (based on Sayers' own Somerville College ), and

17278-473: The introduction for Stephen Hawking 's bestseller A Brief History of Time . Sagan was also known for his popularization of science, his efforts to increase scientific understanding among the general public, and his positions in favor of scientific skepticism and against pseudoscience , such as his debunking of the Betty and Barney Hill abduction . To mark the tenth anniversary of Sagan's death, David Morrison ,

17441-496: The issue of women's education is central to its plot. Social historian and Somerville College alumna Jane Robinson 's book Bluestockings: A Remarkable History of the First Women to Fight for an Education gives a very detailed and immersive account of this history. The university is a "city university" in that it does not have a main campus; instead, colleges, departments, accommodation, and other facilities are scattered throughout

17604-429: The journal Nature revealed that Sagan had included the classified titles of two Project A119 papers in his 1959 application for a scholarship to University of California, Berkeley . A follow-up letter to the journal by project leader Leonard Reiffel confirmed Sagan's security leak. From 1960 to 1962 Sagan was a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley . Meanwhile, he published an article in 1961 in

17767-480: The journal Science on the atmosphere of Venus, while also working with NASA 's Mariner 2 team, and served as a "Planetary Sciences Consultant" to the RAND Corporation . After the publication of Sagan's Science article, in 1961 Harvard University astronomers Fred Whipple and Donald Menzel offered Sagan the opportunity to give a colloquium at Harvard and subsequently offered him a lecturer position at

17930-586: The key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness... The dumbing down of America

18093-458: The last of these had split into "Jurisprudence" and "Modern History". Theology became the sixth honour school. In addition to these B.A. Honours degrees, the postgraduate Bachelor of Civil Law (B.C.L.) was, and still is, offered. The mid-19th century saw the impact of the Oxford Movement (1833–1845), led among others by the future Cardinal John Henry Newman . Administrative reforms during

18256-568: The late 15th century onwards. Among university scholars of the period were William Grocyn , who contributed to the revival of Greek language studies, and John Colet , the noted biblical scholar . With the English Reformation and the breaking of communion with the Roman Catholic Church , recusant scholars from Oxford fled to continental Europe, settling especially at the University of Douai . The method of teaching at Oxford

18419-501: The latter group." Sagan's contributions were central to the discovery of the high surface temperatures of the planet Venus . In the early 1960s no one knew for certain the basic conditions of Venus' surface, and Sagan listed the possibilities in a report later depicted for popularization in a Time Life book Planets . His own view was that Venus was dry and very hot as opposed to the balmy paradise others had imagined. He had investigated radio waves from Venus and concluded that there

18582-656: The lines between narrow AI, AGI, and ASI. However, this view remains controversial. Critics argue that current models, while impressive, still lack crucial aspects of general intelligence such as true understanding, reasoning, and adaptability across diverse domains. The debate over whether the path to ASI will involve a distinct AGI phase or a more direct scaling of current technologies remains ongoing, with significant implications for AI development strategies and safety considerations. Despite these potential advantages, there are significant challenges and uncertainties in achieving ASI: As research in AI continues to advance rapidly,

18745-435: The link with traditional belief and practice. Furthermore, although the university's emphasis had historically been on classical knowledge, its curriculum expanded during the 19th century to include scientific and medical studies. The University of Oxford began to award doctorates for research in the first third of the 20th century. The first Oxford DPhil in mathematics was awarded in 1921. The list of distinguished scholars at

18908-433: The masters were recognised as a universitas or corporation in 1231. The university was granted a royal charter in 1248 during the reign of King Henry III . After disputes between students and Oxford townsfolk in 1209, some academics fled from the violence to Cambridge , later forming the University of Cambridge . The students associated together on the basis of geographical origins, into two ' nations ', representing

19071-420: The mid-13th century, gained influence and maintained houses or halls for students. At about the same time, private benefactors established colleges as self-contained scholarly communities. Among the earliest such founders were William of Durham , who in 1249 endowed University College , and John Balliol , father of a future King of Scots ; Balliol College bears his name. Another founder, Walter de Merton ,

19234-407: The natural NEO impact threat and the intrinsically double-edged essence of the methods to prevent these threats would serve as a "new and potent motivation to maturing international relations." Later acknowledging that, with sufficient international oversight, in the future a "work our way up" approach to implementing nuclear explosive deflection methods could be fielded, and when sufficient knowledge

19397-666: The numerous methods proposed to alter the orbit of an asteroid , including the employment of nuclear detonations , created a deflection dilemma : if the ability to deflect an asteroid away from the Earth exists, then one would also have the ability to divert a non-threatening object towards Earth, creating an immensely destructive weapon. In a 1994 paper he co-authored, he ridiculed a three-day-long " Near-Earth Object Interception Workshop " held by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) in 1993 that did not, "even in passing" state that such interception and deflection technologies could have these "ancillary dangers." Sagan remained hopeful that

19560-416: The observed color variations on Mars' surface and concluded that they were not seasonal or vegetational changes as most believed, but shifts in surface dust caused by windstorms . Sagan is also known for his research on the possibilities of extraterrestrial life , including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by radiation . He is also the 1994 recipient of

19723-409: The opportunity of making acquaintance with one another, and full liberty to live their lives in their own way, without evolving in the best among them, some admirable qualities of loyalty, independence, and self-control. If the average undergraduate carried from University little or no learning, which was of any service to him, he carried from it a knowledge of men and respect for his fellows and himself,

19886-466: The path to ASI might lie in scaling up and improving these architectures. This view suggests that continued improvements in transformer models or similar architectures could lead directly to ASI. Some experts even argue that current large language models like GPT-4 may already exhibit early signs of AGI or ASI capabilities. This perspective suggests that the transition from current AI to ASI might be more continuous and rapid than previously thought, blurring

20049-636: The poor or helping soothe tensions between workers and management within New York City's garment industry. Although awed by his son's intellectual abilities, Sagan's father also took his inquisitiveness in stride, viewing it as part of growing up. Later, during his career, Sagan would draw on his childhood memories to illustrate scientific points, as he did in his book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors . Describing his parents' influence on his later thinking, Sagan said: "My parents were not scientists. They knew almost nothing about science. But in introducing me simultaneously to skepticism and to wonder, they taught me

20212-483: The possibility of extraterrestrial life , including experimental demonstration of the production of amino acids from basic chemicals by exposure to light. He assembled the first physical messages sent into space, the Pioneer plaque and the Voyager Golden Record , which were universal messages that could potentially be understood by any extraterrestrial intelligence that might find them. He argued in favor of

20375-440: The possibility of life on Mars and other planets. According to biographer Ray Spangenburg, Sagan's efforts in his early years to understand the mysteries of the planets became a "driving force in his life, a continual spark to his intellect, and a quest that would never be forgotten." In 1947, Sagan discovered the magazine Astounding Science Fiction , which introduced him to more hard science fiction speculations than those in

20538-549: The power to do so. For example, we could mistakenly elevate a subgoal to the status of a supergoal. We tell it to solve a mathematical problem, and it complies by turning all the matter in the solar system into a giant calculating device, in the process killing the person who asked the question. Stuart Russell offers another illustrative scenario: A system given the objective of maximizing human happiness might find it easier to rewire human neurology so that humans are always happy regardless of their circumstances, rather than to improve

20701-463: The proximity and potential risks of ASI. While there is no scientific consensus, some researchers and AI practitioners argue that current AI systems may already be approaching AGI or even ASI capabilities. University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford , England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in

20864-429: The question of the feasibility of ASI remains a topic of intense debate and study in the scientific community. Carl Sagan suggested that the advent of Caesarean sections and in vitro fertilization may permit humans to evolve larger heads, resulting in improvements via natural selection in the heritable component of human intelligence . By contrast, Gerald Crabtree has argued that decreased selection pressure

21027-424: The real world and disdain for the practical application of scientific knowledge. Plato's followers succeeded in extinguishing the light of science and experiment that had been kindled by Democritus and the other Ionians . In 1995 (as part of his book The Demon-Haunted World ), Sagan popularized a set of tools for skeptical thinking called the "baloney detection kit" , a phrase first coined by Arthur Felberbaum,

21190-415: The recently hired astronomer Frank Drake among the faculty at Cornell. Following the denial of tenure from Harvard, Sagan accepted Gold's offer and remained a faculty member at Cornell for nearly 30 years until his death in 1996. Unlike Harvard, the smaller and more laid-back astronomy department at Cornell welcomed Sagan's growing celebrity status. Following two years as an associate professor, Sagan became

21353-440: The rise of organised sport was one of the most remarkable and distinctive features of the history of the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was carried over from the athleticism prevalent at the public schools such as Eton , Winchester , Shrewsbury , and Harrow . All students, regardless of their chosen area of study, were required to spend (at least) their first year preparing for

21516-594: The running of the university's graduate programmes. Examples of statutory professors are the Chichele Professorships and the Drummond Professor of Political Economy . The University of Oxford is only a "public university" in the sense that it receives some public money from the government, but it is a "private university" in the sense that it is entirely self-governing and, in theory, could choose to become entirely private by rejecting public funds. To be

21679-593: The scalability of the first two approaches and argues that designing a superintelligent cyborg interface is an AI-complete problem. Most surveyed AI researchers expect machines to eventually be able to rival humans in intelligence, though there is little consensus on when this will likely happen. At the 2006 AI@50 conference, 18% of attendees reported expecting machines to be able "to simulate learning and every other aspect of human intelligence" by 2056; 41% of attendees expected this to happen sometime after 2056; and 41% expected machines to never reach that milestone. In

21842-459: The selection process rapidly. A well-organized society of high-intelligence humans of this sort could potentially achieve collective superintelligence. Alternatively, collective intelligence might be constructional by better organizing humans at present levels of individual intelligence. Several writers have suggested that human civilization, or some aspect of it (e.g., the Internet, or the economy),

22005-513: The space probe Pioneer 10 , launched in 1972. Pioneer 11 , also carrying another copy of the plaque, was launched the following year. He continued to refine his designs; the most elaborate message he helped to develop and assemble was the Voyager Golden Record , which was sent out with the Voyager space probes in 1977. Sagan often challenged the decisions to fund the Space Shuttle and

22168-487: The spires in the city centre. The development has been likened to building a "skyscraper beside Stonehenge ". The University Parks are a 70-acre (28 ha) parkland area in the northeast of the city, near Keble College , Somerville College and Lady Margaret Hall . It is open to the public during daylight hours. There are also various college-owned open spaces open to the public, including Bagley Wood and most notably Christ Church Meadow . The Botanic Garden on

22331-502: The startup Safe Superintelligence , which focuses solely on creating a superintelligence that is safe by design, while avoiding "distraction by management overhead or product cycles". The design of superintelligent AI systems raises critical questions about what values and goals these systems should have. Several proposals have been put forward: Bostrom elaborates on these concepts: instead of implementing humanity's coherent extrapolated volition, one could try to build an AI to do what

22494-489: The televised debate, Sagan argued that the effects of the smoke would be similar to the effects of a nuclear winter , with Singer arguing to the contrary. After the debate, the fires burnt for many months before extinguishing efforts were complete. The results of the smoke did not produce continental-sized cooling. Sagan later conceded in The Demon-Haunted World that the prediction did not turn out to be correct: "it

22657-601: The themes of A Personal Voyage and became the best-selling science book ever published in English; The Dragons of Eden : Speculations on the Evolution of Human Intelligence , which won a Pulitzer Prize ; and Broca's Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science . Sagan also wrote the best-selling science fiction novel Contact in 1985, based on a film treatment he wrote with his wife, Ann Druyan, in 1979, but he did not live to see

22820-481: The time, and might be a source of satisfaction to him in after life. Out of the students who matriculated in 1840, 65% were sons of professionals (34% were Anglican ministers). After graduation, 87% became professionals (59% as Anglican clergy). Out of the students who matriculated in 1870, 59% were sons of professionals (25% were Anglican ministers). After graduation, 87% became professionals (42% as Anglican clergy). M. C. Curthoys and H. S. Jones argue that

22983-576: The two uneasily cohabiting modes of thought that are central to the scientific method." He recalled that a defining moment in his development came when his parents took him, at age four, to the 1939 New York World's Fair . He later described his vivid memories of several exhibits there. One, titled America of Tomorrow , included a moving map, which, as he recalled, "showed beautiful highways and cloverleaves and little General Motors cars all carrying people to skyscrapers, buildings with lovely spires, flying buttresses—and it looked great!" Another involved

23146-422: The university and used for research in zoology and climate change . Colleges arrange the tutorial teaching for their undergraduates, and the members of an academic department are spread around many colleges. Though certain colleges do have subject alignments (e.g., Nuffield College as a centre for the social sciences), these are exceptions, and most colleges will have a broad mix of academics and students from

23309-407: The university and were given the right to take degrees. In 1927 the university's dons created a quota that limited the number of female students to a quarter that of men, a ruling which was not abolished until 1957. However, during this period Oxford colleges were single sex , so the number of women was also limited by the capacity of the women's colleges to admit students. It was not until 1959 that

23472-415: The university came into being. Scholar Theobald of Étampes lectured at Oxford in the early 1100s. It grew quickly from 1167 when English students returned from the University of Paris . The historian Gerald of Wales lectured to such scholars in 1188, and the first known foreign scholar, Emo of Friesland , arrived in 1190. The head of the university had the title of chancellor from at least 1201, and

23635-585: The university's statutes. These, to a large extent, remained its governing regulations until the mid-19th century. Laud was also responsible for the granting of a charter securing privileges for the University Press , and he made significant contributions to the Bodleian Library , the main library of the university. From the beginnings of the Church of England as the established church until 1866, membership of

23798-466: The women's colleges were given full collegiate status. In 1974, Brasenose , Jesus , Wadham , Hertford and St Catherine's became the first previously all-male colleges to admit women. The majority of men's colleges accepted their first female students in 1979, with Christ Church following in 1980, and Oriel becoming the last men's college to admit women in 1985. Most of Oxford's graduate colleges were founded as coeducational establishments in

23961-492: Was pitch black at noon and temperatures dropped 4–6 °C over the Persian Gulf , but not much smoke reached stratospheric altitudes and Asia was spared." In his later years, Sagan advocated the creation of an organized search for asteroids/ near-Earth objects (NEOs) that might impact the Earth but to forestall or postpone developing the technological methods that would be needed to defend against them. He argued that all of

24124-419: Was 14, his father's work took the family to the older semi-industrial town of Rahway, New Jersey , where he attended Rahway High School . He was a straight-A student but was bored because his classes did not challenge him and his teachers did not inspire him. His teachers realized this and tried to convince his parents to send him to a private school, with an administrator telling them, "This kid ought to go to

24287-651: Was a kind of religious experience. There was a magnificence to it, a grandeur, a scale which has never left me. Never ever left me." When he was about six or seven, he and a close friend took trips to the American Museum of Natural History , in Manhattan . While there, they visited the Hayden Planetarium and walked around exhibits of space objects, such as meteorites , as well as displays of dinosaur skeletons and naturalistic scenes with animals. As Sagan later wrote, "I

24450-1002: Was a member of the SETI Institute Board of Trustees. Sagan served as Chairman of the Division for Planetary Science of the American Astronomical Society , as President of the Planetology Section of the American Geophysical Union , and as Chairman of the Astronomy Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). At the height of the Cold War , Sagan became involved in nuclear disarmament efforts by promoting hypotheses on

24613-598: Was a surface temperature of 500 °C (900 °F). As a visiting scientist to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory , he contributed to the first Mariner missions to Venus, working on the design and management of the project. Mariner 2 confirmed his conclusions on the surface conditions of Venus in 1962. Sagan was among the first to hypothesize that Saturn 's moon Titan might possess oceans of liquid compounds on its surface and that Jupiter 's moon Europa might possess subsurface oceans of water. This would make Europa potentially habitable. Europa's subsurface ocean of water

24776-426: Was considered controversial, but his rhetorical skill won over the judges and they awarded him first prize. When he was about to graduate from high school, his classmates voted him "most likely to succeed" and put him in line to be valedictorian . He attended the University of Chicago because, despite his excellent high school grades, it was one of the very few colleges he had applied to that would consider accepting

24939-415: Was denied academic tenure at Harvard. He later indicated that the decision was very unexpected. The denial has been blamed on several factors, including that he focused his interests too broadly across a number of areas (while the norm in academia is to become a renowned expert in a narrow specialty), and perhaps because of his well-publicized scientific advocacy, which some scientists perceived as borrowing

25102-435: Was first proposed by I. J. Good in 1965: Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus

25265-471: Was gained, to use them to aid in mining asteroids . His interest in the use of nuclear detonations in space grew out of his work in 1958 for the Armour Research Foundation 's Project A119 , concerning the possibility of detonating a nuclear device on the lunar surface. Sagan was a critic of Plato , having said of the ancient Greek philosopher: "Science and mathematics were to be removed from

25428-414: Was later indirectly confirmed by the spacecraft Galileo . The mystery of Titan's reddish haze was also solved with Sagan's help. The reddish haze was revealed to be due to complex organic molecules constantly raining down onto Titan's surface. Sagan further contributed insights regarding the atmospheres of Venus and Jupiter , as well as seasonal changes on Mars . He also perceived global warming as

25591-458: Was named in honor of his maternal grandmother, Chaiya Clara, who had died while giving birth to her second child; she was, in Sagan's words, "the mother she [Rachel] never knew." Sagan's maternal grandfather later married a woman named Rose, who Sagan's sister, Carol, would later say, was "never accepted" as Rachel's mother because Rachel "knew she [Rose] wasn't her birth mother." Sagan's family lived in

25754-428: Was not such as to conduce to the advancement in life of many persons, except those intended for the ministry." Nevertheless, Walpole argued: Among the many deficiencies attending a university education there was, however, one good thing about it, and that was the education which the undergraduates gave themselves. It was impossible to collect some thousand or twelve hundred of the best young men in England, to give them

25917-553: Was part of a brilliant group of experimental scientists at Oxford in the 1650s, the Oxford Philosophical Club , which included Robert Boyle and Robert Hooke . This group, which has at times been linked with Boyle's " Invisible College ", held regular meetings at Wadham under the guidance of the college's Warden, John Wilkins , and the group formed the nucleus that went on to found the Royal Society . Before reforms in

26080-405: Was raised to £3 billion. The campaign had raised a total of £2.8 billion by July 2018. The university has faced criticism for some of its sources of donations and funding. In 2017, attention was drawn to historical donations including All Souls College receiving £10,000 from slave trader Christopher Codrington in 1710, and Oriel College having receiving taken £100,000 from the will of

26243-628: Was transfixed by the dioramas—lifelike representations of animals and their habitats all over the world. Penguins on the dimly lit Antarctic ice [...] a family of gorillas, the male beating his chest [...] an American grizzly bear standing on his hind legs, ten or twelve feet tall, and staring me right in the eye." Sagan's parents nurtured his growing interest in science, buying him chemistry sets and reading matter. But his fascination with outer space emerged as his primary focus, especially after he had read science fiction by such writers as H. G. Wells and Edgar Rice Burroughs , stirring his curiosity about

26406-445: Was transformed from the medieval scholastic method to Renaissance education, although institutions associated with the university suffered losses of land and revenues. As a centre of learning and scholarship, Oxford's reputation declined in the Age of Enlightenment ; enrolments fell and teaching was neglected. In 1636, William Laud , the chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury , codified

26569-486: Was unacceptable to most of the other members. The two parties eventually split, and Talbot's group founded Lady Margaret Hall in 1878, while T. H. Green founded the non-denominational Somerville College in 1879. Lady Margaret Hall and Somerville opened their doors to their first 21 students (12 at Somerville, 9 at Lady Margaret Hall) in 1879, who attended lectures in rooms above an Oxford baker's shop. There were also 25 women students living at home or with friends in 1879,

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