Talks
Watch the latest talks on our video page for interesting perspectives, analysis, and insights on exponential technologies.
Ray Kurzweil: We Can Control AI Before It Controls Us
Over time, technology offers solutions to old problems while creating new issues in the process. The more powerful the technology, the greater its potential to do good and harm. Artificial intelligence is no exception,...
Kurzweil Says Passion Projects Are the Best Way to Learn
According to Ray Kurzweil, learning by doing will become the means by which the next generation of children learns to participate in the world. Technology has already revolutionized education by changing how humans access,...
Peter Diamandis Explains the Potential of Exponential Medicine
As technology progresses in medicine, humans are increasingly gaining more sovereignty over their health. Soon, instead of visiting doctors infrequently to fix health issues as they arise, we’ll more pre-emptively monitor and improve our...
Ray Kurzweil: Accelerating Tech Is Making Old Intellectual Property Laws Obsolete
As technology and innovation move faster and faster, concerns over ownership and access continue to increase. In answer to a question at a Singularity University event, Ray Kurzweil suggested we need to rethink intellectual...
7 Key Factors Driving the Artificial Intelligence Revolution
Under, behind and inside many of the apps we use every day, a revolution is underway. It's a revolution that started decades ago but today is empowering companies to deliver better, smarter services with greater ease...
Ray Kurzweil Explores How Self-Driving Cars Will Choose Between Life or Death
Driving a motor vehicle requires making tough choices in the heat of the moment. Whether slamming on the brakes in traffic or speeding up before a light turns red, split-second decisions are often a...
Why Ray Kurzweil Believes We Are Becoming More God-Like [Video]
People tend to ask Ray Kurzweil all manner of questions about technology and the future. But they also want to know about his own personal philosophy. In one session last summer, a questioner asked...
Ray Kurzweil: The Future Offers Meaningful Work, Not Meaningless Jobs
In a future where automation has taken most human “jobs,” will humans stop working? It all depends on how you define work, says Ray Kurzweil. He favors the idea of a universal basic income...
Ray Kurzweil Explains Why Radical Life Extension Will Be Better Than You Think
According to Ray Kurzweil, we’re approaching a time when humans will begin to radically extend their lifespans. This sounds good on the surface, but will we have enough resources to support everyone? And won’t...
Ray Kurzweil: To Merge With Technology Is to Enhance Our Humanity
Technological shifts outpace our awareness of them. While we're busy with our day-to-day lives—getting a new smartphone or downloading the next updates—we often don't notice how these incremental changes shape our relationship with technology....
Ray Kurzweil Outlines the Coming Biomedical Revolution [Video]
Will we live longer lives in the future? According to Ray Kurzweil, it's only a matter of time until technology begins successfully tackling age-related disease—and life expectancy grows longer and longer. At some point,...
What You Need to Know About the Future of Money
If you don’t hate banks, they probably bore your socks off. That’s okay. The day-to-day machinations of the financial machine are either mundane or massively complicated. But what happens in finance should matter to...
The Netflix of Finance Suggests Stocks Based on Where You Shop
Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance.
We would all love to take better care of our finances. But the sad truth is, many of us don’t.
In the...
What Happens If Society Is Too Slow to Absorb Technological Change?
Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance.
It’s tempting to dub 2016 the "Year of Artificial Intelligence."
This is the year AI has hit the public consciousness hard. Whether calls for...
How Quantum Computing Can Make Finance More Scientific
Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance.
Modern life is punctuated by market cycles.
One year the gears of commerce are whirring along. Businesses are hiring and investing. People are...
The World Will Be Continuously Upgradable When Everything Is Connected
Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance.
One day in the future, we’ll look back in wonder at how our physical objects used to be singular, disconnected pieces of...
Solar Energy Is Now as Cheap as Fossil Fuels
Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance.
“We are now hitting a crossover point where solar, without subsidies, is starting to beat out all other sources of energy.”
So said...
Digital Currency Tech Will Be as Transformative as the Internet
Exponential Finance celebrates the incredible opportunity at the intersection of technology and finance. Watch live as hundreds of the world’s leading investors, entrepreneurs and innovators gather in New York to define the future of...
A Big Shift Is Coming, and It Could Uber-ize Entire Industries
Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing Summit.
Who will rule the future economy—entrepreneurs or mega corporations? Will the economy fracture...
5 Great Lessons on Scrappy Innovation for Big Companies Like GE
Kevin Nolan, CTO of GE Appliances, spent 28 years at General Electric, “trying to do innovation,” as he puts it, before giving up. He finally accepted he couldn’t do it, internally at least.
At one...
How the National Science Foundation Is Catalyzing the Future of Manufacturing
Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing Summit.
Technological progress often results from the flow between institutions driving cutting edge...
The Personal Factory Is Here—and It Will Bring a Wild New Era of Invention
Visit Singularity Hub for the latest from the frontiers of manufacturing and technology as we bring you coverage of Singularity University's Exponential Manufacturing summit.
The software startup launching out of a garage or a dorm room...
Why Prospecting Asteroids for Precious Resources Is Now Possible [Video]
Today’s world is built on a foundation of material objects, and Earth is the only place to obtain the natural resources that modern life depends on. But maybe not for much longer.
Most of the...
An Inside Look at the SU Labs Startup Accelerator: The Entrepreneur’s Journey
Do you consider yourself an entrepreneur aspiring to launch a startup? Increasingly, you’re not alone. Developing technologies are opening entrepreneurship up to more people, while successful new startups are popping up around innovation hubs...
Ray Kurzweil on Giving Future AI the Right to Vote [Video]
All technology impacts our individual daily lives one way or another—but perhaps no technology makes us question our collective humanity as much as artificial intelligence.
Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist, spoke to an audience during...
As Technology Shakes Social Foundations, It Might Also Build New Ones [Video]
Dr. Guy Standing is a distinguished political philosopher and one of the world’s foremost experts on basic income, which he has researched and promoted since the 1980s—long before it began trending in the media.
We...
3 Ways Exponential Technologies Are Impacting the Future of Learning
“Simply put, we can’t keep preparing children for a world that doesn’t exist.”
-Cathy N. Davidson
Exponential technologies have a tendency to move from a deceptively slow pace of development to a disruptively fast pace. We...
Innovative Technology Isn’t Enough: How to Create Your Startup’s Mission Statement
“Technology isn’t enough,” even for a tech startup. Technology is merely the how of a much deeper story.
So said Kevin Starr to the startup founders participating in the Singularity University Labs Startup Accelerator during...
Don’t Guess, Learn: Rapid Prototyping with Tom Chi [Video]
“Doing is the best type of thinking.” – Tom Chi
Tom Chi, CPO and head of X at Factory, is largely known for his work creating Google Glass, but arguably one of his largest contributions...
Can technology solve the world’s rising food problems? [Video]
Emerging technologies like synthetic meat, GMOs, and robotic farms provide a glimpse of a coming era in which technology solves the world's food problems. But some sobering statistics from the World Food Programme frame the scope of the problem...
How Should We Prepare for the AI Revolution? Ray Kurzweil Responds in This Q&A [Video]
On the cusp of a far-reaching revolution thanks to the advances in artificial intelligence and computing, it's easy to feel a bit...concerned. Well, maybe more than just a bit, especially if you consider societal attitudes about technology.
Truth is that...
How Will We Meet the Energy Demands of the Coming Megacities?
Odds are you live in a city. In fact, more than half the world today lives in cities and by 2050, it's expected that two-thirds of the world will be residing in cities.
While smaller cities struggle to modernize to...
What’s the Meaning of Life If Society Doesn’t Need You Any Longer?
If you have a job, odds are society benefits from your work, and theoretically, the compensation you receive is how the marketplace values your contribution. All other things being equal, the better you are at your job,...
Kurzweil Responds to ‘When Robots Are Everywhere, What Will Humans Be Good For?’ [Video]
Lately, media around the web has been bracing for robots — not time-traveling robots per se, but robot workers. Specifically, the increased sophistication of artificial intelligence and improved engineering of robotics has spurred a growing concern about what...
The Story Behind the First 3D Printed Wrench in Space [Video]
You may recall that late last year, a breakthrough in manufacturing occurred a few hundred miles above the Earth.
After having sent a 3D printer to the International Space Station and printed its first object, a file for...
You don’t know the Dark Web and that’s probably a good thing [Video]
Discussing security and internet privacy on a panel with California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom and Singularity University CEO Rob Nail, Goodman nicely distinguishes the Surface, Deep, and Dark Webs.
In all likelihood, you probably have never opened your browser and searched for...
What sins of the future are you committing right now? [Video]
Odds are you're a decent, upstanding person. You abide by the laws, pay taxes, and don't rock the boat. You value security but not at the expense of privacy. Like the majority of people around you, you're...
A Primer on Computing’s Exponential Growth and Where Tech Is Headed [Video]
We live in a time when our news feeds are packed with stories about technological advancements, scientific discoveries, and breakthrough innovations, so much so that it can be overwhelming to keep up with it all. Progress is moving so...
The End of Meaningless Jobs Is a Win For Us All
Many experts studying the topic of automation believe that the current rate of advancement is leading us into a future with fewer and fewer available jobs.
Maybe that’s a good thing.
In his 2013 essay, “On the Phenomenon...
When It Comes To Jobs, Automation Can Be a Force For Good
Advances in automation will create an enormous increase in productivity and wealth, and potentially, a world where that wealth is unavailable to the majority of the world’s population. However, properly applied, these same advances...
As an Innovator, Steve Jobs Had an “Exquisite Sense of Market Timing”
Just over 8 years ago on January 9, 2007, the first iPhone was launched at MacWorld and the modern era of mobile computing was born.
Steve Jobs began that historical announcement saying, "Every once and a while, a...
