The second day of the Copernican World Congress in Toruń was marked by lectures and debates that included five Nobel Prize winners invited to Toruń. The debate of the Nobel laureates was listened to by Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki.

The Head of Government also talked to eminent scientists in the lobbies of the Congress. The topic of conversation was the origins of the universe and space phenomena, as well as the imminent era of artificial intelligence.

“I am not personally worried that robots with Arnold Schwarzenegger’s face are going to take over, but a friendly teacher recently told me, we also talked about it with the Minister of Education and Science, that a student brought him a paper that was written by a programme available on the Internet. So, this creates powerful challenges for the whole education process as well”, said the Head of Government.

In his speech before the Nobel debate, the Prime Minister spoke about modern technology including the internet and the paradoxes related to it. 

“The invention of the Internet was supposed to connect us into a single global village, but it has also become the leaven of many problems and the beginning of a new isolation and enslavement on a scale we have not known before, if it ends up in the hands of dictators, autocrats, and this is what happens”, assessed the Prime Minister.

He expressed the hope that the advances of knowledge in the 21st century would help progress, but also make us humbler in the face of the world. 

“Because the combination of the two great and progressive qualities- humility and the desire to seek truth and new horizons are the greatest of virtues that help us build a better world”, added the Prime Minister.

The final chord of the second day of the Toruń Congress was a debate on ‘Central banks in times of pandemics and rising energy commodity prices’, attended by the President of the National Bank of Poland NBP, Adam Glapiński, and presidents and board members of central banks from Bulgaria, Croatia, Lithuania, Romania, Switzerland, and Ukraine.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński