FYI all: The Singularity Summit 2008 is coming up, 9am-5pm October 25th, 2008 in San Jose, CA. This is run by my host organization, the Singularity Institute. Speakers this year include Vernor Vinge, Marvin Minsky, the CTO of Intel, and the chair of the X Prize Foundation.
Before anyone posts any angry comments: yes, the registration costs
actual money this year. The Singularity Institute has run free events before, and will run free events in the future. But while past Singularity Summits have been media successes, they haven’t been fundraising successes up to this point. So Tyler Emerson et. al. are trying it a little differently. TANSTAAFL.
Lots of speakers talking for short periods this year. I’m intrigued by that format. We’ll see how it goes.
SAN JOSE, CA
– Singularity Summit 2008: Opportunity, Risk, Leadership takes place
October 25 at the intimate Montgomery Theater in San Jose, CA, the
Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence announced. Now
in its third year, the Singularity Summit gathers the smartest people
around to explore the biggest idea of our time: the Singularity.
Keynotes will include Ray Kurzweil, updating his predictions in The Singularity is Near,
and Intel CTO Justin Rattner, who will examine the Singularity’s
plausibility. At the Intel Developer Forum on August 21, 2008, he
explained why he thinks the gap between humans and machines will close
by 2050. “Rather than look back, we’re going to look forward 40 years,”
said Rattner. “It’s in that future where many people think that machine
intelligence will surpass human intelligence.”
“The acceleration of technological progress has been the central
feature of this century,” said computer scientist Dr. Vernor Vinge in a
seminal paper in 1993. “We are on the edge of change comparable to the
rise of human life on Earth. The precise cause of this change is the
imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human
intelligence.”
Singularity Summit 2008 will feature an impressive lineup:
Dr. Ruzena Bajcsy, pioneering AI and robotics researcher
Dr. Eric Baum, AI researcher, author of What is Thought?
Marshall Brain, founder of HowStuffWorks.com, author of Robotic Nation
Dr. Cynthia Breazeal, robotics professor at MIT, creator of Kismet
Dr. Peter Diamandis, chair and CEO of X PRIZE Foundation
Each year, the Singularity Summit attracts a unique audience to the
Bay Area, with visionaries from business, science, technology,
philanthropy, the arts, and more. Participants learn where humanity is
headed, meet the people leading the way, and leave inspired to create a
better world. “The Singularity Summit is the premier conference on the
Singularity,” Kurzweil said. “As we get closer to the Singularity, each
year’s conference is better than the last.”
The Summit was founded in 2006 by long-term philanthropy executive
Tyler Emerson, inventor Ray Kurzweil, and investor Peter Thiel. Its
purpose is to bring together and build a visionary community to further
dialogue and action on complex, long-term issues that may transform the
world. Its host organization is the Singularity Institute for
Artificial Intelligence, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization studying
the benefits and risks of advanced artificial intelligence systems.
Singularity Summit 2008 partners include Clarium Capital, Cartmell
Holdings, Twine, Powerset, United Therapeutics, KurzweilAI.net, IEEE
Spectrum, DFJ, X PRIZE Foundation, Long Now Foundation, Foresight
Nanotech Institute, Novamente, SciVestor, Robotics Trends, and MINE.
Singularity Summit 2008
FYI all: The Singularity Summit 2008 is coming up, 9am-5pm October 25th, 2008 in San Jose, CA. This is run by my host organization, the Singularity Institute. Speakers this year include Vernor Vinge, Marvin Minsky, the CTO of Intel, and the chair of the X Prize Foundation.
Before anyone posts any angry comments: yes, the registration costs actual money this year. The Singularity Institute has run free events before, and will run free events in the future. But while past Singularity Summits have been media successes, they haven’t been fundraising successes up to this point. So Tyler Emerson et. al. are trying it a little differently. TANSTAAFL.
Lots of speakers talking for short periods this year. I’m intrigued by that format. We’ll see how it goes.
Press release: