Enrico Fermi is widely credited with giving voice, in 1950, to the question, "Where are they?" In our Universe, the basic conditions for life are seemingly readily met, and yet there is no evidence whatever for the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations. This has become known as Fermi's paradox.

"The Future of Intelligence in the Cosmos" is an interdisciplinary two-day workshop that seeks to elucidate potential scenarios for the evolution of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy and thus, perhaps, to find a resolution for this seeming paradox. The probability that intelligent civilizations exist has been succinctly stated by the Drake Equation. While the first few terms in the equation, such as the number of stars in the Milky Way Galaxy, the fraction of stars that have planets, and the number of planets in the habitable zone, are becoming better known, the last three terms that depict the fraction of planets that evolve intelligent life, the fraction that communicate, and the fraction of the lifetime of the Milky Way Galaxy over which they communicate, are not well known. It is these last three terms in the Drake Equation that are the focus of the workshop. Experts in the relevant astrobiological disciplines will review the current understanding of the formation frequency of environments that can give rise to life, intelligence and civilization, with a particular focus on potential bottlenecks or dead ends. As advances in technologies and consequently advances in fields such as nano-technology, bio-technology and artificial intelligence rapidly increase (presently at exponential rates), will humankind be confronted by a singularity, or will this exponential saturate? Will we continue to evolve at biologically mediated rates, or evolve into machine-like intelligence, or simply be replaced by machines? Although the goals of the workshop are flexible, we want to include at least the following three questions.

-- What research needs to be done to prepare humankind for the future, whatever future that is?
-- What are the likely options for the evolution of humans?
-- What can we do to make these scientific questions and others more exciting to our children who will inherit the future?

The workshop will consist of a series of invited and contributed talks (15 to 45 minutes in duration) with a substantial amount of time set aside for discussion. In the morning of the second day, we plan to have breakout sessions around the three questions stated above. The product of the workshop will be one or more white papers addressing those three questions, and setting the stage for active follow-on programs.

We are hoping to provide not only a very enjoyable and stimulating workshop, but one that identifies potentially important research questions that are worthy of further study within NASA, or elsewhere.