Singularity University

Singularity University, based on the NASA Ames campus in Silicon Valley, is an interdisciplinary university whose mission is to assemble, educate and inspire a cadre of leaders who strive to understand and facilitate the development of exponentially advancing technologies (bio, nano, info, AI, etc.), and apply, focus and guide these tools to address humanity’s grand challenges.

Site – http://singularityu.org

Visions of the 21st Century

What Will Replace The Internet? First it will become wireless and ubiquitous, crawling into the woodwork and perhaps even under our skin. Eventually, it will disappear. The Internet seems to have just arrived, so how can we possibly imagine what will replace it? In truth, early versions of the Net have been around since the 1960s and ’70s, but only after the mid-1990s did it begin to have a serious public impact. Since 1994, the population of users has grown from about 13 million to more than 300 million around the world. About half are in North America, and most–despite significant progress in rolling out high-speed access–still reach the Internet by way of the public telephone network. What will the Internet be like 20 years from now?

Site – http://www.time.com

Future Watch: A.I. comes of age

These are indeed nice days for artificial intelligence researchers. While Stair’s performance might not seem much better than that of a dog fetching the newspaper, it’s a technological tour de force unimaginable just a few years ago. “Stair, please fetch the stapler from the lab,” says the man seated at a conference room table. The Stanford Artificial Intelligence Robot, standing nearby, replies in a nasal monotone, “I will get the stapler for you.” Stair pivots and wheels into the adjacent lab, avoiding a number of obstacles on the way. Its stereoscopic camera eyes swivel back and forth, taking in the contents of the room. It seems to think for a moment, then approaches a table for a closer look at an oblong metallic object. Its articulated arm reaches out, swivels here and there, and then gently picks up the stapler with long, rubber-clad fingers. It heads back to the conference room. “Here is your stapler,” says Stair, handing it to the man. “Have a nice day.” Indeed, Stair represents a new wave of AI, one that integrates learning, vision, navigation, manipulation, planning, reasoning, speech and natural-language processing. It also marks a transition of AI from narrow, carefully defined domains to real-world situations in which systems learn to deal with complex data and adapt to uncertainty. AI has more or less followed the “hype cycle” popularized by Gartner Inc.: Technologies perk along in the shadows for a few years, then burst on the scene in a blaze of hype. Then they fall into disrepute when they fail to deliver on extravagant promises, until they eventually rise to a level of solid accomplishment and acceptance.

Site – http://www.computerworld.com

Site – http://stair.stanford.edu/

The Singularity: A Special Report

Across cultures, classes, and aeons, people have yearned to transcend death. Bear that history in mind as you consider the creed of the singularitarians. Many of them fervently believe that in the next several decades we’ll have computers into which you’ll be able to upload your consciousness—the mysterious thing that makes you you. Then, with your consciousness able to go from mechanical body to mechanical body, or virtual paradise to virtual paradise, you’ll never need to face death, illness, bad food, or poor cellphone reception.

Now you know why the singularity has also been called the rapture of the geeks.

The singularity is supposed to begin shortly after engineers build the first computer with greater-than-human intelligence. That achievement will trigger a series of cycles in which superintelligent machines beget even smarter machine progeny, going from generation to generation in weeks or days rather than decades or years. The availability of all that cheap, mass-­produced brilliance will spark explosive economic growth, an unending, hypersonic, tech­no­industrial rampage that by comparison will make the Industrial Revolution look like a bingo game.

Site – http://www.spectrum.ieee.org

The Future of the Video Game Industry

When Ray Kurzweil, the author of The Singularity is Near and one of the most noted futurists around, takes the stage at GDC 2008 in San Francisco on Thursday to talk about ‘the next 20 years of gaming,’ he’ll be weighing in at a moment in the industry’s existence when the lines between games and Hollywood and advertising are blurring. One thing that strikes me about how video games are intersecting with people’s lives in 2008, when it was simply impossible to find a Nintendo Wii for sale anywhere, is that the medium now is truly mainstream.

Site – http://www.news.com

Artificial Intelligence explains the Singularity

The technological singularity takes place when the human race succeeds in creating an A.I being more intelligent than any human could ever be. Let us call it Alpha. Since the act of creating Artificial Intelligence is a task that benefits directly from the intelligence level of the creator, this more-intelligent-than-men being would surely be faster and more efficient at creating his own A.I being, let us call him Beta. This second generation being would too be better than its predecessor, and could in turn create a third one, Gamma, who is even more powerful, and so on. As capacity increases, the median generation time decreases, resulting in an exponential rate of evolution that quickly becomes asymptotic, at which point it becomes difficult to speculate further.

Site – http://www.youtube.com

The 6 Most Important Experiments in the World

Scientists rely on computer models to understand the toughest concepts in science: the origin of the universe, the human brain, artificial life, the behavior of atoms, and the future climate of the planet. These are some of the most important experiments that are currently active in the world.

Site – http://discovermagazine.com

An Oracle for Our Time, Part Man, Part Machine

It was the Internet that stripped the world of its innocence. Algorithms, as closely guarded as state secrets, buy and sell stocks and mortgage-backed securities, sometimes with a dispassionate zeal that crashes markets. Algorithms promise to find the news that fits you, and even your perfect mate. You can’t visit Amazon.com without being confronted with a list of books and other products that the Great Algoritmi recommends. Its intuitions, of course, are just calculations — given enough time they could be carried out with stones. But when so much data is processed so rapidly, the effect is oracular and almost opaque. Even with a peek at the cybernetic trade secrets, you probably couldn’t unwind the computations. As you sit with your eHarmony spouse watching the movies Netflix prescribes, you might as well be an avatar in Second Life. You have been absorbed into the operating system.

Site – http://www.nytimes.com

SENSOPAC

The SENSOPAC project will combine machine learning techniques and modelling of biological systems to develop a machine capable of abstracting cognitive notions from sensorimotor relationships during interactions with its environment, and of generalising this knowledge to novel situations. Through active sensing and exploratory actions the machine will discover the sensorimotor relationships and consequently learn the intrinsic structure of its interactions with the world and unravel predictive and causal relationships. Together with action policy formulation and decision making, this will underlie the machine’s abilities to create abstractions, to suggest and test hypotheses, and develop self-awareness. The project will demonstrate how a naïve system can bootstrap its cognitive development by constructing generalization and discovering abstractions with which it can conceptualize its environment and its own self. The continuous developmental approach will combine self-supervised and reinforcement learning with motivational drives to form a truly autonomous artificial system. Throughout the project, continuous interactions between experimentalists, theoreticians, engineers and roboticists will take place in order to coordinate the most rigorous development and testing of a complete artificial cognitive system.

Site – http://www.sensopac.org

The Singularity Summit 2007

In futures studies, the singularity represents an “event horizon” in the predictability of human technological development past which present models of the future cease to give reliable or accurate answers, following the creation of strong AI or the enhancement of human intelligence. Many futurists predict that after the singularity, humans as they exist presently won’t be the driving force in scientific and technological progress, eclipsed cognitively by posthumans, AI, or both, with all models of change based on past trends in human behavior becoming obsolete. While some regard the singularity as a positive event and work to hasten its arrival, others view the singularity as dangerous, undesirable, or unlikely. The most practical means for initiating the singularity are debated, as are how (or whether) the singularity can be influenced or avoided if dangerous. The Singularity Summit 2007 will explore these nuances. We invite you to join us.

Site – http://www.singinst.org

Ray Kurweil at the Killer App Confrence

Ray Kurzweil is a pioneer in the fields of optical character recognition, health, artificial intelligence, transhumanism, technological singularity and futurism. At the Killer App Expo in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Ray gave the evening Keynote speech. We were fortunate enough to have two HD cameras at the conference and grabbed the entire keynote with house audio. Whereas we would normally cut this 80 minute presentation into a 10 to 15 minute chunk, Ray’s material was so good, so inspiring that we have decided to leave it complete. If you’re an Apple TV user, this is a great bit to watch in full 720p. I hope you enjoy this as much as we did.

Site – http://www.technologyevangelist.com

The Singularity Institute For Artificial Intelligence

The rise of human intelligence in its modern form reshaped the Earth. Most of the objects you see around you, like these chairs, are byproducts of human intelligence. There’s a popular concept of “intelligence” as book smarts, like calculus or chess, as opposed to say social skills. So people say that “it takes more than intelligence to succeed in human society”. But social skills reside in the brain, not the kidneys. When you think of intelligence, don’t think of a college professor, think of human beings; as opposed to chimpanzees. If you don’t have human intelligence, you’re not even in the game. Sometime in the next few decades, we’ll start developing technologies that improve on human intelligence. We’ll hack the brain, or interface the brain to computers, or finally crack the problem of Artificial Intelligence. Now, this is not just a pleasant futuristic speculation like soldiers with super-strong bionic arms. Humanity did not rise to prominence on Earth by lifting heavier weights than other species.

Site – http://www.singinst.org