2008
The debate between Ray Kurzweil and John Horgan is an obvious must-see. Kurzweil sees technological progress as an exponential path, Horgan points out all the flat lines that he and science journalists ignore. Fireworks, guys.

2009
Anders Sandberg tells us what he thinks it would take to emulate the brain. It’s somewhat technical, but if you’re fascinated by the brain like I am, and fascinated by how tomorrow’s technologies might harness brain power, you’ll love this talk.

Anders Sandberg at Singularity Summit 2009 — Technical Roadmap for Whole Brain Emulation from Singularity Institute on Vimeo.

2010
Steve Mann’s talk is probably my favorite. Regarded by many as the world’s first cyborg, Mann discusses his concept of human intelligence. We have smartphones, smart elevators, smart light switches, what about smart people. He wants to take advantage of the supercomputers in our heads and, through wearable computers – most famously cyborg cameras – the human brain can be involved in the computational process.
And you definitely don’t want to miss the hydrolophone that allows you to play music by disrupting the flow of water.

Steven Mann: Humanistic Intelligence Augmentation and Mediation from Singularity Institute on Vimeo.

2011
Michael Shermer, founder of Skeptic Magazine and a man who has appeared twice on the Colbert Report, gives a lively presentation. The material in his talk draws from four recent and thought-provoking books: Matt Ridely’s “The Rational Optimist,” Steven Pinker’s “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” Robert Wright’s “Nonzero,” and his own book “The Mind of the Market.” His message might be surprising to some, namely that things are getting better. He backs the claim up with a lot of interesting graphs on quality of life, individual earnings, justice, declining violence, etc. It’s a wide-ranging, entertaining presentation. It’s worth a watch just to hear his response to the question posed by his theist friends, “If you’re an atheist why should you be moral.”

But don’t stop there. Find your own nuggets of insight in this list of prophets and geniuses.

[image credit: The Guardian]
[video credit: Singularity Institute via Vimeo and YouTube]
image: Kurzweil
videos: Singularity

I attended my first Singularity Summit last year, and was surprised and happy about the breadth of topics covered. Sure, artificial intelligence took up a lion’s share of the presentations, but there was plenty of synthetic biology, nanotech, and general scientific philosophy to keep my head reeling for weeks afterward. Watson serves as an exciting center piece for the 2011 Summit, but you should still expect the computer’s victory over Jeopardy! champions to push the conversation to every corner of technological interest. And with Jennings himself giving an address, you can bet there will be plenty of wry, yet insightful humor about the practical implications of Watson’s success.

If the first video of Jennings getting whooped by Watson doesn’t show off his cool under fire demeanor, the second clip (a favorite of mine from his record breaking run on Jeopardy!) definitely will.

As always, we should expect futurist Ray Kurzweil, who’ll be opening the Summit, to play an influential role. He’s been testing out his material on the Watson victory since April, so hopefully we’ll get a nuanced and insightful look at how this development shapes his vision for the future. With his predictions forecasting nothing less than humanity’s complete blending with machines, you can bet Kurzweil will have much to say about Watson’s impressive language skills and how human such a computer system may really be.

The Singularity Summit is always a mind-awakening experience. Last year I got to play music on water, talk to a child robot, and watch a magician trick some of the smartest minds in the world. If you’re at all interested, I recommend you register and attend. At $300 a day (or $485 for both days), Singularity Summit 2011 isn’t the cheapest conference out there, but it is one of the best.

Grand halls, famous buildings, and the energy of NYC - should be a great time.

As always, Singularity Hub will keep you up to date on Summit news as we lead up to its arrival in October. Check in with us regularly to hear more about the speakers, special guests, and surprises in store.

[image credits: Singularity Summit]
[sources: Singularity Summit]

Kurzweil smiles as he discusses Watson, AI, and his famous predictions for 2029.

It continues to be a good Spring for Ray Kurzweil. Not only has the media been rather kind to him lately, some of his biggest predictions about computer intelligence seem more and more likely. Kurzweil has famously predicted that machines will match human intelligence and pass the Turing Test by 2029. Seem far fetched? Well, IBM’s Watson system just surpassed the Jeopardy! skills of Ken Jennings. That’s a pretty good sign of things to come, at least according to Kurzweil. In a new video interview taken at the iLabs Singularity Summit in Italy, the noted futurist seems pretty happy with the recent trends in artificial intelligence, especially Watson’s win and the human reaction to it. Check out David Orban‘s seven minute chat with Kurzweil in the video below. Could Watson’s successors really pass the Turing Test in 20 years? Seems pretty likely to me, too.

Orban actually gets to the Watson phenomenon towards the end of the interview. Skip to 4:13 to see that discussion. Kurzweil explores Watson’s chances with the Turing Test at 6:16. His famous Long Bet with Mitch Kapor, which we’ve discussed a bit before, comes up at 6:55. Don’t forget to go back to the opening eventually, as Kurzweil gives some interesting commentary on how our language of technology doesn’t accurately reflect its reality:

I share Kurzweil’s admiration for Watson and its programmers. As he points out, the system has amazing language processing skills even if they aren’t quite up to human levels. It also can assimilate vast stores of knowledge and retains that information in ways that meet or exceed the majority of humans. I differ form Kurzweil, however, in thinking that it was these skills that let Watson win Jeopardy! As Ken Jennings pointed out after the event, most Jeopardy! champions have the exact same skillset and the computer’s trouncing of humans may actually be due to superior timing on the buzzer rather than superior knowledge. In any case, I can’t argue that hearing Watson referred to as a ‘he’ time and again is pretty cool, and there’s little doubt that the IBM system is a great sign that AI is actually making some steady progress.

Will it continue to grow fast enough to reach human levels of (emotional) intelligence and pass the Turing Test by 2029? I find it hard to argue against the notion. With Watson the language processing skills are getting closer, and the ability to assimilate mass amounts of data and synthesize an acceptable answer is clearly a great step in the right direction. It may take much longer than 20 years to get a computer intelligence to think in the same way as a human, but getting one to talk and converse like a human could happen much sooner. 2011 is shaping up to be a great year for Kurzweil, 2029 could be a great year for everyone.

[screen capture and video credit: David Orban]

New videos of the 2010 Singularity Summit have arrived. My favorite: watching Goertzel, Legg, Yudkowski, and Tooby debate the arrival of artificial general intelligence.

This year’s Singularity Summit was a great collection of lectures, debates, and impromptu discussions among the technologically minded. Now, thanks to the Singularity Institute, you can share in those events by watching videos available online. SI recently uploaded several of the lectures and the debates from Singularity Summit 2010 to Vimeo, with more on their way. For those who were unable to travel to San Francisco and attend the summit, these videos are a great way to join the Singularity community. While the two days held plenty of great lectures, the events I enjoyed most were the debates between those who had just presented. Watch the panel discussion on artificial general intelligence featuring Ben Goertzel, Eliezer Yudkosky, Shane Legg, and John Tooby in the video below. It’s followed by the one on one conversation between Terrence Sejnowski and Dennis Bray about emulating biological systems. It’s friendly debates like these that really make the Singularity Summit so unique.

When I attended this year’s summit, I was struck by the camaraderie among attendees. For those who regularly espouse the possibilities of accelerating technologies, meeting someone else who is ready to agree with, rather than argue against, your position can be rare. At the Singularity Summit, however, the air of techno-optimism was almost universal. That made for some very frank and open discussions about far out concepts in AI and bioengineering without someone shouting “that’s insane” or “you’ll destroy us all.” It’s really cool to see what experts in a field will admit to when they don’t have to worry about ridicule.

Panel discussion on artificial general intelligence.

Debate on emulating biological systems.

The same air of camaraderie at the Summit kept discussions from heating to the point where they would have gotten really out of hand. You’ll notice that Ben Goertzel (in the first video) is forced to start arguing with himself because no one else is directly attacking his point of view. While it is nice that the Summit is a place where techno-optimists can discuss ideas openly, it did feel a little ideologically homogeneous. There were several (including James Randi, Dennis Bray, and Irene Pepperberg) who asked for caution moving forward, but there wasn’t a lot of outright opposition between speakers. Even if two people agree that the world’s technological progress is accelerating, they should still have plenty to argue about. Hopefully the Singularity Institute, and the Singularity community as a whole, will garner enough clout in the years ahead that they can invite respected scholars who directly oppose some of the basic assumptions made by Summit attendees. I think the ensuing debate would be even more interesting to watch than the ones we’ve seen so far. Until then, keep checking the SI account on Vimeo for new videos from the 2010 Singularity Summit, and keep reading Singularity Hub. We may be techno-optimists (most days at least) but we love arguing against ourselves, too.

*Thanks to Michael Vassar, President of SI, for providing the videos and notifying me about their arrival.

[screen capture and video credits: Singularity Institute]
[source: Singularity Institute]

Kurzweil and Myers weigh in on building artificial minds.

10 years? 20 years? 100 years? Never? There are about as many predictions for when artificial intelligence will match human intellect as there are AI researchers. More, really, when you figure in all the people who simply read about AI research and decide to make their own decisions (I’m in that boat myself). Processing power has been increasing exponentially for years, and few doubt that it will continue to do so for at least a few years longer. There are already plans underway to develop supercomputers that perform at least as many flops as the human brain in the next three years. But calculations are not thoughts and 10^16 calculations per second is not a recipe for cognition. So the questions remains, will we be able to use this processing power to accurately model the brain and create an artificial intelligence based upon that model? Futurists like Ray Kurweil say yes, but detractors like PZ Myers have a litany of reasons why the task is unreachable in the near future. Recently this debate has gotten a little ugly.

I attended this year’s Singularity Summit, which among other things is a place where those optimistic about the potential of AI come to discuss the topic. The big draw this year, as with most years, was a talk by Ray Kurzweil. His presentation, titled The Mind and How to Build One, explored the complex issues surrounding reverse-engineering the brain. Gizmodo wrote up a review of that presentation, and then PZ Myers, a biologist and noted skeptic, used that review as a basis for critiquing Kurzweil’s work on his blog. This attracted the attention of many commenters, both in favor and against Myers critques, and Gizmodo and Slashdot syndicated Myer’s post. Separating out the rational arguments from the ranting accusations isn’t easy, but let me try.

You know things are serious when webcomics start to comment on a debate. Click the image to go to the full strip at Scenes from a Multiverse.

Kurzweil was misquoted in the original Gizmodo article. He stated that different people in the field of AI had different ideas about if/when we’ll be able to reverse engineer the brain (meaning simulate or replicate the brain’s processing techniques). He mentioned that Henry Markram (at the Blue Brain Project) thinks this could be accomplished in the next decade. Kurzweil repeated his own estimates (which he’s stated many times in his books and lectures) that this will likely not occur until the end of the 2020s. What did Gizmodo report? That Kurzweil thinks the brain could be reverse engineered in the next decade. Myers assumed this as fact when he wrote his critique.

In his Singularity Summit talk, Kurzweil also mentioned that the human brain arises out of the information contained in the genome. He estimates that the genome data is roughly equal to 50 megabytes of which 25 megabytes is really needed for the brain. Kurzweil thinks that such data could be described by about one million lines of code. Gizmodo took this to mean that Kurzweil believes that the brain (in all its complexities) can be engineered from a million lines of code. Myers was not happy with this line of reasoning. He pointed out the complexities of protein folding, protein-protein interactions, cell to cell interactions, and all the other molecular biology systems that are likely necessary to the development of the human mind/brain. Scientists are currently struggling with understanding each of these systems, and modeling any of them is likely to require huge amounts of programming and processing power. Myers uses this perceived belief of Kurzweil as evidence that the futurist has no idea what he’s talking about.

Well, interestingly enough, Kurzweil seemed to have agreed with many of Myer’s critiques in the parts of his talk Gizmodo didn’t fully explain. First, his mentioning of the link between the genome and the mind was merely to comment on how complex systems can arise out of relatively little data. He pointed to fractal engineering, the importance of environmental interactions, and other external factors as being the process by which limited data becomes an enormously complex thinking machine. Furthermore, during the question and answer portion of his talk, Kurzweil went on to highlight the importance of education and learning experiences in mind/brain development. This is why, in part, Kurzweil believes Markram’s estimates are too optimistic, or rather why he believes Markram’s simulated brain won’t be an artificial intelligence (at first). If you attended all of Kurzweil’s Singularity Summit lecture, and read all of Myers blog post you start to see that both men find the premise of reverse engineering the human brain to be a daunting and complex task that we do not yet fully understand.

This is not to say that I think that the two would easily hammer out their differences over a glass of wine. Kurzweil’s estimate of 2029 (or so) for the emergence of human-level AI is still very optimistic, and it seems that Myers finds some of the molecular systems in the brain, and the interactions of these systems to be incomprehensible in the near future (perhaps forever?). These two have very different ideas of what AI may be able to accomplish in the years ahead.

It’s unfortunate then, to see these ideas meet at such unseemly angles. Myers should not have based his critiques on a second hand summary of Kurzweil’s speech. Eventually the Singularity Institute will release Summit videos of the presentations, and Myers would have been able to hear Kurzweil’s words for himself. Undoubtedly he would still find things to object to, but they would be things that Kurzweil actually said, and in context. Kurzweil, for his part, might want to make all his talks and slides openly accessible so that critiques can reference them directly.

The sad thing is that all of this ad hominem and frenzied internet commentary really draws us away from meaningful debate. Here are some questions I have that I would love to see get the same attention as these recent misquotes:

• Can the principles of operation for the brain be divorced from its architecture? That is, can we build a program that thinks like a human brain but does not need to mimic the cell biology that the brain uses?
• Is it possible to build an objective measure for level of intelligence, either human or nonhuman? Can we say that X program or Y person is Z more intelligent than another? (Shane Legg has already come up with an equation he thinks would work).
• Can we test for consciousness? (Kurzweil has stated that he believes the answer is probably not – Turing Tests may be able to measure the believability of an alleged consciousness but not the consciousness itself).
• How much processing power will we really need to simulate the human brain at the neuron level? At the molecular level? As a mind?
• Will we develop artificial intelligence by creating an artificial brain and teaching it to be intelligent?
• Will we develop artificial intelligence by creating simple learning machines and teaching them to be smarter?
• Will we develop artificial intelligence at all?

Whether you’re a supporter of Kurzweil, Myers, or the flying spaghetti monster it would be nice to hear what you have to say about the development of artificial intelligence. Leave a comment, let me know.

[image credit Wikicommons (modified), Scenes from a Multiverse/Jonathan Rosenberg]
[source: Pharyngula, Gizmodo]

The Singularity is near…it’s at the Hyatt in San Francisco. This past weekend I saw some of the leading minds in accelerating technologies gather at the Singularity Summit. Now in its fifth year, the Summit acts as the premier forum for discussing the science that may launch us into an era when natural human intelligence is no longer the dominant force on the planet. The two days of the conference drew the usual crowd of futurists, scholars, and innovators including Singularity frontman Ray Kurzweil, AI guru Ben Goertzel, and robotics artist David Hanson. I was also pleased to see some newer faces like Irene Pepperberg, noted researcher in avian intelligence, and James Randi, perhaps the most famous and successful skeptic in the world (he’s an amazing magician, too). Does it sound like fun? Oh hell yes, you have no idea. But don’t worry if you missed it, I’ll give you the short version of how it all went down.

The Singularity Summit is a weird beast. Part science lectures, part networking, part philosophical discussion it comes off as an enthusiastic collection of people who aren’t afraid to think well outside the box. One attendee called it a comic con for those who prefer science to science fiction. Most of the day was consumed with lectures, but we were also treated to some neat demonstrations such as robots from David Hanson’s workshop, and a delightful musical instrument (H2Organ) developed by Steven Mann that uses both electricity and water. Check it out:

There’s no doubt that the core of the Summit was about science, and the core of that core was artificial intelligence. AI was on everyone’s minds and in every presentation. Yet AI isn’t always the easiest thing to discuss. You know it’s going to be a fun conference when the smartest people in the room are also the ones that get called crazy on a regular basis. Talk about artificial intelligence with most people and you’re likely to get one of two responses: “Won’t robots want to kill all humans?” and “Yeah, we’ve been saying artificial intelligence is 15 years away for 60 years now.” It doesn’t come as a big surprise that most of the discussion about computer AI was relatively cautious and the focus was on hopes for developing paths towards reasonable successes.

The creations from Hanson Robotics are always as much characters as they are robots. These two, both named Zeno, demonstrated their abilities to understand and interact with humans.

Ben Goertzel, Demis Hassabis, Terrence Sejnowksi, David Hanson, and Shane Legg all discussed their work in artificial intelligence and while the details of those experiments were too intricate for the layman, their visions for the future of the science were often very accessible. Goertzel shared his recent collaborations with Genescient using AI to examine the genomes of fruit flies bred for incredible longevity (five times the normal). He thinks AI biologists are the key to understanding human genes and extending human life spans. Hassabis urged his fellow researchers to use neuroscience’s insights into the brain to understand the basic algorithms intelligent beings use to think .Sejnowski thinks artificial systems with cognitive learning skills are going to let us improve efficiency in radio bandwidths, robotic highways, and the aging electric grid. Shane Legg developed an equation to objectively rate intelligence, so we might be able to realistically describe how far we’re progressing in AI. Hanson wants to teach robots to act like us, and even want our love, so that we can teach them how to be moral before we give them the capabilities of gods. Any of these presentations could have merited a full weekend of discussion, but they were all dwarfed by the big draw at the Summit, Ray Kurzweil.

The floating head of Ray Kurzweil had some really interesting things to say about the nature of the brain and artificial intelligence.

Kurzweil, who teleconferenced in for the event, has a stock presentation on the future. Exponential graphs describing the accelerating nature of technology (think Moore’s law, but for almost everything) are the crux of the show. Thankfully, though, Kurzweil knew his audience has mostly seen it all before so he focused mainly on the human brain and the development of an artificial mind. This is also the topic of his upcoming book. The most memorable point Kurzweil made was rather refreshing for me to hear him say: consciousness may be too subjective to measure. Sure, the Turing Test may let you know whether we believe an AI to be conscious, but consciousness itself may be immune to objective testing. An interesting concession. Kurzweil also went into some cool details about how ‘recognizer’ units in the brain’s cerebral cortex may handle pattern recognition by building simple lists that get crossed referenced. Just like the LISP programming language, if you’re familiar with it. Each concept is described by a list of related concepts. From that simple premise you can develop all kinds of sophisticated views on the universe. All in all, Kurzweil gave one of the more interesting talks I’ve seen from him in years…it would have been even better had he been able to attend in person.

Along with AI presentations were discussion of what I simply think of as neat science. Where ‘neat’ could easily be replaced with ‘mind-blowing’. Mandayam Srinivisan of MIT discussed haptic technologies, and the brain’s ability to adapt to new stimuli. Deaf and blind individuals can learn how to understand normal speech by using their fingers to read lips and feel through vibrations (a technique called tadoma). Their brains start to use the visual and speech centers to process information from their sense of touch. Srinivisan tied that into his work with developing robotic devices that let you feel virtual objects. Imagine if your computer mouse gave you physical resistance whenever you tried to move a cursor through a line on your screen. Such haptic technologies may eventually let us ‘feel’ and manipulate nanoscale objects.

Surgeon Brian Litt discussed all sorts of brain computer interfaces and implants. He pointed out how little we know about how to connect electronics to nerve tissues and the surprises that the brain has yet to reveal. Did you know that your mind replays recent memories in the prefrontal cortex while you sleep? It does, and at high speeds, too. You get a rapid repetition of the skills you tried to develop during the day. Pretty cool.

As you might expect, there were plenty at the Summit who played cheerleader to the future, often with good reason. Ramez Naam reveled in the information we’re about to learn as we begin to map the genomes of all the species on Earth. Jose Cordeiro gave us reason to relax about the energy crisis, explaining the abundance of solar power, the real possibilities of nuclear fusion, and how ‘surprise sources’ of power always arise. Lance Becker explained his work in extending the period during which you can be revived after fatal injury – “mostly dead is still partially alive”. Ellen Haber-Katz, whose work we’ve discussed before, talked about how a strain of mouse (the MRL) had been raising hopes for regeneration of lost tissue in humans.

Anita Goel drew a lively crowd after her presentation ended with a discussion on the fundamental physical nature of intelligence.

The chummy atmosphere of techno-optimism didn’t give rise to much controversy, but a few tried to get some lively debate going. Anita Goel, who discussed her brilliant work fusing biology, physics, and information systems spent most of her time describing how natural molecular machines like DNA polymerase read and write our genetic code. But at the end of her talk she threw caution to the wind and tried to ask provocative questions. Do complexities in matter and energy give rise to intelligence or is it the other way around? Is intelligence a fundamental part of the universe just like energy and matter? Sure, we didn’t actually come up with any answers, but the discussions in the halls afterward were quite fun.

Still, if there was one thing that this year’s Summit was missing it was opposition. There wasn’t a single speaker who really looked at the concept of the Singularity and cried bullsh*t. Sure, Dennis Bray warned that the complexities of biological systems would surprise us, and Irene Pepperberg cautioned researchers from manipulating non-human (animal) intelligence when we really know very little about how it works. But these scientists didn’t challenge the idea of accelerating technology directly. No one really did. And while I firmly believe (at least on most days) that the Singularity will arise, I would have liked to have at least one curmudgeon rain on everyone’s parade just to keep things interesting.

The closest we got were two healthy reminders to keep ourselves honest. Michael Vassar, president of the Singularity Institute that organizes the Summit, opened the first day with a presentation on the nature of science. I really hope to find this talk online at some point so I can share it with you. Vassar’s insights into the history of science and its competitors in rational thought was nothing short of brilliant. It made me very conscious of the power of empiricism, and helped me question the systems we’ve built for knowing things.

James Randi's spirited talk contained feats of magic, videos of the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson, and a healthy reminder to stay skeptical... especially of our own beliefs.

Of course, the true double check on our sanity was performed by the grand pooh-ba of skepticism himself, James Randi. The Amazing Randi is a world class magician and mentalist as well as being at the forefront of examining (and unerringly disproving) paranormal claims. Through delightful anecdotes, magic tricks, and humor Randi pointed out the outrageous things we’ll believe. He performed a feat of mentalism that proved he could read someone’s mind to the great appreciation of the crowd. It was a fun presentation to say the least.

I’ve read a few tweets and blog posts that question the relevance of Randi’s presentation. Fun, they say, but not really germane to the discussion on hand. I disagree. For Randi’s tricks and stories conveyed one powerful observation: we can be easily fooled when we think about every situation through the lens or our own specialty. Accelerating technologies. Exponential graphs of computer processing power. Amazing developments in artificial intelligence. These are the focus of the Singularity Summit and of futurists the world over. They are powerful indicators of what humanity may accomplish in the years ahead, but we must be cautious not to see every development as further evidence of their truth. Technological optimism must be balanced by healthy skepticism, or we will blindly pursue pipe dreams while ignoring the arrival of greater benefits and dangers. That’s the final lesson I took away from Singularity Summit 2010.

It was an amazing weekend. Hope to see you there next year.

[image credits: Singularity Institute, Aaron Saenz/Singularity Hub]
[video credits: Aaron Saenz/Singularity Hub]

Back to the West Coast!

Now coming up on its fifth year, the Singularity Summit is the premier annual gathering for those interested in all things Singularity.  Hosted by the SIAI, the Summit brings together an impressive lineup of speakers to deliver a two day marathon of presentations.  As with previous years, Ray Kurzweil will take the stage at this year’s Summit as the keynote speaker.  Scheduled for August 14-15 at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco, you can grab tickets at a discounted price if you register before July 1.

Colorful figures such as wearable computing guru Steven Mann and Hanson Robotics founder David Hanson will be joining Kurzweil to round out an excellent slate of speakers.  The theme this year will be “intelligence amplification”, exploring the future of neuroscience, bioscience, and cognitive enhancement.  Coincidentally (or not!) we recently reported that Kurzweil’s next book will cover a similar theme with the title How the Mind Works and How to Build One.

Last year the Singularity Summit was held in New York, marking the first time the Summit had ventured away from its home here in Silicon Valley.  Singularity Hub is glad to see the Summit coming back to our neck of the woods and of course we will be there in full force to bring you the best coverage on the net.

The Singularity Summit website is hosting videos of some of the more notable presentations from its 2009 Summit.  Readers might also enjoy taking a look at our comprehensive coverage of the 2008 Summit.  Hope to see you there!

Click this screen capture to take you to the Singularity Summit videos.

While the set of videos is not yet complete (there are still a few waiting for permission from presenters), there are two dozen to keep you busy. That’s nearly six hours of the summit to get your neurons firing in consideration for the future. I can’t say that I have any favorites yet, but I would definitely watch the panel discussions. Where else can you see so many leaders in their field sit down and have a reasonable discussion about immortality or killer robots?

Wait a second…why are you still reading this? Go watch the videos already!

*Anissimov is the media director for Singularity Summit and the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (which hosts the summit each year). Along with Ray Kurzweil and Michael Vassar, he heads the organization.

The Singularity Summit 2009 was a resounding success in New York this past weekend, Oct 3-4 2009.  For those who are not familiar with the Singularity Summit, it is the most prominent, high profile annual event focused on the Singularity.  Over 800 attendees crowded the prestigious venue of the 92 Street Y, an important landmark in the cultural scene of the city.

During the two days of the conference there were over 30 speeches and panels, luckily in a single sequence without the burden and compromise that parallel sessions so too often put on the attendees. From the creation of an Artificial General Intelligence, the Whole Brain Emulation approach, Synthetic Neurobiology, Intelligent Agent, there were many somewhat technical sessions, interspersed with others that were more generally concerned with cognition, and its biases, quantum computing, or lighter but not less important subjects such as autonomous vehicles, the petaflop macroscope, and others. Surely there will be detailed reports of many if not all of these. All the talks were recorded by both SIAI and 92Y, and the videos should be online soon.

In a moment of financial and economic crisis, where many people are concentrated on their short term problems, it is not easy to popularize an idea that even according to the most optimistic projections can take decades to develop. But this is exactly what is needed, if the organizers want to broaden the appeal of the conference, and of the non-profit behind it, the Singularity Institute For Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). In order to gather more resources and donations, there is little other choice but to make sure that the message and the goals of SIAI are known and accepted by the widest possible audience. In this sense Michael Vassar President of SIAI, won his bet in deciding to bring the Summit to the East coast for the first time this year, instead of at its traditional home in Silicon Valley on the West coast.

It is hard to estimate their respective proportions—let’s say 50-50 for the sake of simplicity—but the participants could be rather easily divided between those who approached for the first time the concepts, the series, and the potential applications behind the singularity, and those who have been following the field for some time, or have already participated in past editions of the conference. It is important in my opinion to judge the success of the conference with two different sets of criteria for these two groups.

Beautiful NYC

It is unlikely that somebody completely ignorant about the issues of the Technological Singularity would decide to attend, but even so it is likely that at least one introductory speech and maybe a Singularity Primer document, either in a printed form or at least as a nicely formatted downloadable pdf file, would have been useful. It is clear that in a rapidly evolving field it is not possible to compose and edit a definitive or, and complete introductory treatise. However, it should be part of the mandate of SIAI, as it reaches out to wider circles of non-specialists, to take on the responsibility of the creation of such a document, with the additional task of updating it every couple of years.

A last-minute and welcome addition to the program was a conversation between science-fiction author, and now chairman of Genescient, a company founded on the use of artificial biological selection, Gregory Benford, and the developer of symbolic computation system Mathematica, author of A New Kind Of Science, and creator of Wolfram|Alpha the computational knowledge engine, Stephen Wolfram

One cannot enter in the merit of the content of the talks without the description becoming specialized. It definitely appeared, also from the informal polls that some of the speakers asked from the audience, that’s the concepts of Artificial General Intelligence, an Intelligence Explosion, and of the Technological Singularity, are becoming more and more widely accepted. Frustratingly for a scientific approach the bounds for any of these achievements or events do not necessarily appear to converge, except for the leading figure of the field, Ray Kurzweil, who consistently persists in his precise projections of fundamental milestones in the future.

An almost universal need appeared to find a better and stronger connection between the ideas, theories and models exposed at the conference, and their full implementation, too often cut short for lack of funding, either in academia or in the industry, concentrated on short-term results. In this sense it was interesting to hear investor Peter Thiel express his desire to support long-term the goals SIAI, made concrete through its sponsorship by Clarium Capital which Thiel manages, and participate in the venture capital panel, where the consensus appeared to still be that of a model where 5-year exits were the norm.

From a logistical point of view the organization of the event was practically flawless! The registration, the speeches, the Q&A, the breaks, flowed without any noticeable problem. A large group of volunteers took care many details, sometimes overlooked, as the quick and seamless changing of the computers between one speech and the other, or something as simple as holding the door of the conference room for people entering or exiting during the speech to make sure that it would not noisily slam… Such an attention to detail is a real sign of a high quality event.

Eliezer Yudkowsky very eloquently illustrated the unacceptable downsides of not properly dealing with the issues of the Singularity and of Artificial General Intelligence in his talk on cognitive biases, and giant risks. And towards the end of the conference, one of the emotional highlights was certainly the joint call from the panel composed of Yudkowsky, Thiel, longevity researcher Aubrey de Grey, and moderated by Michael Vassar, to invest from each of the attendees as they are doing, passion and resources to face up to the great challenges in front of us all in the future.

Headlining the event will of course be de facto singularity frontman Ray Kurzweil.  Also speaking at the event will be dozens of other distinguished individuals from the scientific and philosophical community, including David Chalmers, Ben Goertzel, Aubrey De Grey, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Peter Thiel, and William Dickens.  The full list and schedule of speakers is located here.

Below is a promotional video about the summit:

Earlier we reported that the Singularity Summit 2008 Videos had been released, but then they were suddenly taken down without explanation.  Now singularity hub is the first to announce that the videos are back online.  You can check them out here:

http://singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2008

http://singinst.org/media/singularitysummit2008

There were way more than seven speakers at the summit, so more videos are sure to follow soon.  The current videos cover talks from Vernor Vinge, Bob Pisani, Nova Spivack, Esther Dyson, James Miller, Justin Rattner, Dharmendra Modha, Marshall Brain.

If you have not already seen it, please check out Singularity Hub’s coverage of the event here