Apocalyptic naysayers predicted that the world would end in the year 2000, not with a colossal nuclear bang but rather with a whimpering cybernetic counting error. The millennium, greeted in January with requisite fanfare, has so far proved surprisingly unmillennial, a year marked by continuing flare-ups of age-old ethnic conflicts. The real millennium, 2001, is the trademarked intellectual property of a science-fiction-author-cum-futurist-cum-physicist who remains isolated in strife-torn Sri Lanka.

That man, Arthur C. Clarke, saw great things for mankind beyond the Y2K mark. He envisaged that within the next year humans would have embarked upon far-flung space travel guided by a Heuristically programmed ALgorithmic (HAL), a machine that can reproduce "most of the activities of the human brain, and with far greater speed and reliability." Neither of his imaginings is close to becoming a reality. In truth, artificial intelligence has had its ups and downs since the 1968 release of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Computers can beat humans at the computationally intensive task of playing chess. But HAL's coherent replies to a range of human questions in "perfect idiomatic English" still eludes the best that computer science has to offer.

Despite a decidedly mixed track record, optimism about the prospects for machine intelligence still reigns at Carnegie-Mellon University, a longtime AI bastion. To mark the opening of a new computer center that bears the name of AI pioneers Alan Newell and Herbert Simon, the university held a one-day conference on October 19th that brought together experts from inside and outside the university (including Arthur C. Clarke, if only in video presence). Their mission: to answer the question of whether computers would help or hinder the building of a good world in the year 2050.

The assembled panel of experts was mostly true believers. If the CMU pundits are right, HAL will have arrived in 50 years' time: computers will reach or surpass humans in their reasoning ability. The main debating point centered not on whether we are capable of gestating machines smarter than us but whether those machines will do our bidding or destroy us instead. Will the movie we live in be The Jetsons or Terminator 2? No one entertained the idea that the truly intelligent cyborg might simply prove a bust. Remember that Nobelist Herbert Simon, a speaker at the conference, predicted in 1965 that machines would be capable of doing any work humans can do by 1985. (A graduate student could probably still get a doctorate from CMU for designing a robot to do something as simple as climbing stairs without tripping or stacking plates and cutlery in a dishwasher, an assignment that might be evaluated by how few crystal goblets were broken when loading the machine.)

CMU¿s artificial intelligentsia foresee accelerated evolution of cybersmarts. Author and speech recognition innovator Ray Kurzweil told a sympathetic audience that we have arrived at the age of exponentials. Every year, Kurzweil says, we experience exponential growth in the rate of exponential growth for computer and telecommunications technology. But exponentials, he notes, also apply to brain scanning, genome sequencing, the Internet and even human life spans. By 2030, he suggests, machines will be as intelligent as a human. In 50 years, as reverse engineering of the mind continues, we will be able to achieve full-immersion virtual reality.

Forget helmets and data gloves. Nanobots, robots the size of a molecule, will travel through the bloodstream of your brain beaming messages to neurons that will enable the simulation of sight, sound, smell and hearing as well as emotion and sexual sensations. You¿ll also be able to travel to St. Barth¿s, attend every game of the World Series or engage Al Gore in a debate. This goes way beyond an accurate graphical rendition of the cherry in the tropical rum punch on the beach in St. Barth¿s. The sense of self will become infinitely fluid at the same time as the concept of personal space will take on a much more literal meaning. What kind of postmodern succotash emerges when you trade my id for your ego? Dr. Kurzweil, meet Dr. Derrida. Kurzweil did not speculate on the prospects of this development for a Nike or a Budweiser. Imagine an inner voice--"Whaaassup"--exploding in your head just as you¿re about to doze off. Or what if Philip Morris could tweak remotely a nicotine receptor in your brain?