Prof. Wodzisław Duch from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Informatics has been recognized for hisachievements in artificial intelligence research. The title of “Academician” was awarded to him by the World Academy of Artificial Consciousness (WAAC), an organization bringing together the leading minds in this field.
The World Academy of Artificial Consciousness (WAAC) is an academic
non-governmental institution which—although formally established in Paris—operates across borders and has a global reach. Its mission is to advance research on artificial consciousness through the integration of science, technology, andphilosophy. The Academy focuses primarily on research into the evolution of artificial intelligence toward
self-awareness and subjective experience, while also developing robust ethical frameworks and international governance standards.
WAAC members, including Nobel Prize laureates, come from leading universities and scientific institutions such as Harvard University, the University of Cambridge, the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS), the MaxPlanck Institute for Cognitive and Brain Sciences, the Weizmann Institute of Science, the University of California, the University of Padua, Columbia University, and the City University of New York. Prof.
Wodzisław Duch from the Faculty of Physics, Astronomy and Applied Computer Science at Nicolaus Copernicus University (UMK) has now joined the ranks of WAAC Academicians. The award highlighted the innovative and interdisciplinary nature of his AI research and emphasized that he has paved new theoretical paths on which future generations of scientists will build.
Lecture at the Professors’ Club
For years, Prof. Duch has focused his research on artificial intelligence, neural networks, computer science, quantumphysics, and cognitive science. Part of his scientific inquiries will be presented at the Professors’ Club named after Ludwik Kolankowski on Wednesday, October 8, at 6:00 PM in the UMK Copernican Integration Center, where he will give a lecture titled “The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on the Development of Science.”
“We are convinced that nothing can surpass human intelligence, because our brains are the most complex structures inthe known Universe. Lasciate ogni speranza—abandon all hope. AI will not only match us but has no limitations like biological brains. The complexity of our cells is necessary for sustaining life, not for achieving intelligence,” explains Prof. Duch.
During the lecture, he will discuss large language models (LLMs) and multimodal models (LMMs), which contain trillionsof parameters. Their operation enables the performance of many cognitive functions previously possible only for human and animal brains: perception, intelligence, creativity, communication skills, emotions, and self-awareness.
“Progress over the past two years has been extraordinarily fast and continues to accelerate. AI systems now fully integrate text, audio, image, video, and other signals. The largest language models have already absorbed almost all human knowledge and behave similarly to us: they make mistakes, confabulate, have biases, but also possess intuition and imagination,” explains Prof. Duch. “Soon, all significant scientific achievements will only be possible in collaboration with agents based on large multimodal language models (LMMs). Such systems are becoming increasingly autonomous, generating hypotheses, evaluating them, planning and conducting experiments, and writing complete scientific papers.Systems capable of self-reflection are becoming intelligent digital forms of existence