The Singuarity Summit is the premier conference on the Singularity. As we get closer to the Singularity, each year's conference is better than the last.
Artificial Intelligence is probably the most important technology in humanity's future. Now is the time to be looking closely at its benefits and risks.
The future is rushing at us fast. Bringing together great minds to make sense of what's coming is critical.
As with previous Summits, videos and audios of the talks are planned for upload w/in the next few months. Note, a more complete follow-up of the Summit is forthcoming. In the meantime, please enjoy the following photos from this yr’s successful Summit, with near sellout attendance of close to 500:
One of the exciting things that we are doing differently this year, is that we have some wonderful artists donating their time and talent to the Summit as Graphic Recorders. Dan Jumanan, Diana To and Julie Gieseke from Visual Ink, and Susan Rankin, an independent artist. They will be producing a visual story map of the conference, as well as graphic summaries of interesting points from the speakers.
At the Singularity Summit, we encourage you to talk to Dan, Diana, Julie and Susan during breaks. Please ask them questions, comment on what they are doing or make suggestions.
What is a Graphic Recorder? A person who uses words and images to synthesize a visual representation of a speech, a meeting, or a conference. This person is able to attend to and use multiple levels of communication, including content, emotions and group dynamics to create their visual summary.
The content, or information level captures things like what the speaker is saying. The emotional, or feeling level picks up on the level of excitement or passion a speaker may have or the mood of the audience. The group dynamics level may pick up on the interactions between speaker and audience, a conversation or debate, or may also encourage audience participation in the form of making corrections or suggestions to the story map or summaries. Additionally the final product has the ability to capture the interest of people who were not able to attend in ways a video or written summary cannot.
Introducing our Graphic Recorders:
Visual Ink, headed up by Michael Stark and Kevin Woodson, kindly provides three of the Singularity Summit’s Graphic Recorders, Dan Jumanan, Julie Gieseke and Diana To. Visual Ink is a company that designs and delivers communication programs with long term value by bridging internal and external business communication. They can act as the ‘glue’ in massive change initiatives because visual communications aid in the delivery and focus on specific outcomes over the scope of a long-term process. They can also enhance communication between the company, their shareholders, employees and their clients.
Dan and Diana show an example of a Story Map
At Visual Ink, Diana strives to simplify concepts and data in order to bring forth an idea or story through images. Diana focuses on taking pencil sketches to color, enhancing images on the computer, and producing visual tools as communication pieces. In addition to her art foundation, she also included general business and informational technology & society in her education. She has kept some impressive company over the last few years with several Fortune 500 companies as well as non-profits through her work with Visual Ink.
Growing up in the Bay Area, Diana was drawn to the varied cultures, the vast artistic influences and, of course, the delicious food of San Francisco. A long time foodie and cook, Diana spends free time exploring the world over in search of her next meal. She strongly believes that creative expression is within grasps of everyone and we all need to hone a medium, whether it be food or a pencil.”
Dan, at Visual Ink, has used art to engage a wide variety of audiences throughout his life as a painter, printmaker and graphic designer. Currently, as a designer for Visual Ink, his artwork focuses on communication, change and engagement in organizations. Dan has been combining art, facilitation, and strategic thinking to create business illustrations, used to tell the story of change, make the complex simple, and get people on board and excited. Dan’s objective is to capture, clarify, and portray the your ideas.
Julie Gieseke is a graduate student in Organizational Management and Development at the Fielding Graduate University. She works as a visual facilitator for corporate and non-profit clients as well as private consultants and facilitators. She uses visual mapping in her one on one practice as a Coach and Master NLP Practitioner. She is launching the first graduate level academic offering of Visual Facilitation courses for Fielding’s Organizational Management and Development program this fall. She is currently writing her thesis on the use of graphic facilitation by the OD community as a systems thinking intervention tool. She hosts conversations among the visual practitioner community, looking at the Tipping Point of the work of visual practitioners and ways in which the community and its members can contribute to the advancement and use of this powerful tool. Most recently this conversation occurred at the annual conference of the International Forum of Visual Practitioner in August 2008
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Susan Rankin is a sketch artist residing in San Jose, a transplant from Pennsylvania. She attended Moore College of Art and Design, and graduated with the class of 1995 with a BFA Illustration. Corporate Event Sketching is a new venture for her and one that she’s latched onto with much enthusiasm, especially with the aid of new technology. With the use of a ModBook, the first ever tablet Mac, she’ll be sketching what goes in her ear and tickles her brain while listening to the various and amazing speakers appearing at the Singularity Summit. Look for cleaned up and colored versions of those sketches here after the conference!
A raw sketch of Susan's interpretation of Exponential Growth.
Again, we encourage you to talk to Dan, Diana and Susan during breaks. Feel free to ask them questions, comment on what they are doing or make suggestions. They are friendly people!
If you’d like to get in touch with our artists, you may contact Dan, Diana and Julie via Visual Ink, and Susan via her website SueRankin.
See you at the Summit!
On Friday, October 24th, SciVestor and The Singularity Institute present the Emerging Technologies Workshop. This event is sold out, and is being held at The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, CA. The day’s agenda follows:
8:30am Doors open
9:00am Registration – coffee and breakfast bar available
9:30am Opening Keynote – Jonas Lamis, SciVestor
10:00am Semantic Web panel + Q&A
11:00am Break
11:15am Introducing CLIMOS
11:40am Introducing m2mi
12:00pm Lunch (offsite)
1:15pm Nanotechnology Panel + Q&A
2:15pm Break
2:30pm Introducing Piryx
2:50pm Robotics panel + Q&A
3:50pm Closing Keynote – Jamais Cascio, IFTF
Event concludes at 4:30pm.
Jonas Lamis Exec Director SciVestor
Jamias Cascio Analyst Institute for the Future
Josh Dilworth Manager Porter Novelli
Chris Morrison Editor Venturebeat
Thomas Dietterich Professor University of Oregon
Dag Kittlaus CEO stealth-company.com
Andrew Braswell Director of Research iNano Capital
Christine Peterson President Foresight Institute Nano panelist
Jamais Cascio Director Center for Responsible Nanotechnology
Douglas Jamison President Harris & Harris Group
Christopher Anazalone President & CEO Arrowhead Research Corp
Jonas Lamis Exec Director SciVestor
Dan Kara CEO Robotics Trends
Bruce Hall President Velodyne LIDAR
Chetan Kapoor CEO AgilePlanet
Trevor Blackwell CEO Anybots
Dan Whaley CEO Climos
Geoff Brown CEO m2mi
Tom Serres CEO Piryx
With a week to go before the 2008 Singularity Summit, we are pleased to announce the final speaker line-up. The event is scheduled for Saturday, October 25th at The Montgomery Theater in San Jose, CA. A few tickets still remain.
9:00 AM Welcome
9:05 AM Conversation: Vernor Vinge and Bob Pisani
9:35 AM Nova Spivack
9:55 AM Esther Dyson
10:15 AM James Miller
10:40 AM Morning Break
10:55 AM Justin Rattner
11:25 AM Eric Baum
11:45 AM Dharmendra Modha
12:05 PM Ben Goertzel
12:30 PM Lunch
2:05 PM Marshall Brain
2:25 PM Cynthia Breazeal
2:45 PM Conversation: IEEE Spectrum Singularity Report
3:30 PM Afternoon Break
3:50 PM Pete Estep
4:10 PM Neil Gershenfeld
4:30 PM Peter Diamandis
5:00 PM Ray Kurzweil
5:35 PM Closing
6:00 PM Summit Ends
Greetings! I’m Alexis, one of the volunteers for the 2008 Singularity Summit. I’ve volunteered to add posts to the blog to give our community a behind the scenes peek at what it takes to make an event like this happen. One of the things I really appreciate about this organization is their willingness to be transparent, because without it, I couldn’t bring you this post!
I hope I speak for everyone who is part of creating the 2008 Singularity Summit by saying: We are really excited about how well this is coming along!
A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting in the peaceful courtyard just outside the Montgomery Theater, early for a meeting with Bruce, Susan, Tyler and Doug. Our mission? Final walk through of the Montgomery Theater, with Anthony, the man of the hour at the Theater.
Doug, our man in charge of capturing the 2008 Summit on video, located the best spots for camera placement in the theater. He talked about what he was going to do to capture some of the more unique angles that will make his final creation appealing to future viewers.
Bruce and Tyler spoke with Anthony about details like the arrangement of tables in the theater to maximize flow for our guests between registration and being seated, as well as choosing an ideal spot where our hosted lunch would take place. Ideal, because rain or shine, we found a place were our members can eat and socialize conveniently.
Backstage Susan and the team masterminded the flow of speakers, the hide-out for volunteers, and the room where Doug would interview some of the speakers. Doug had other things to attend to, and departed at this point.
The Montgomery Theater, when not the hub for great minds spreading amazing ideas, is the permanent home for the San Jose Children’s Musical Theater. Productions that capture the hearts of adults and children alike are hosted here at various times of the year, like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. If you live in San Jose often, you may want to check out some of their future shows.
Up next? The Tech Museum! Located right next to the Montgomery Theater, the Tech Museum is a hands-on interactive museum with galleries dedicated to themes like Robotics, Leonardo da Vinci, and other things designed to encourage the inventor in all of us, especially our kids.
Our point of contact, Anna, gave us a tour of the museum. We checked out the private rooms and chose the best one to hold the October 24th pre-Summit workshops.
The Final Destination: Our last stop was the Fairmont San Jose hotel. This luxury hotel received a four diamond rating and is conveniently located across the street from both the Montgomery Theater and the Tech Museum.
Susan’s legal background and business acumen made her the prime choice to negotiate a great deal for Singularity Summit attendees. If you call Leana Angkham, let her know you are going to attend the Summit and make your reservations before September 20th; she will give you the discounted rate of $139.00.
Leana was kind enough to give us a tour of the Fairmont, and the rooms available to our guests and volunteers. The Fairmont has, for your convenience, an Executive Business Center, rooftop pool, a fully equipped fitness center and of course high speed internet access. Not to forget, the view of the Tech Museum is great!
Leana also collaborated with Tyler, Bruce and Susan for a special surprise (for now) for the Singularity Summit 2008 Volunteers . . . I guess not everything can be transparent, luckily this is one of the fun things to be secretive about and I trust Tyler.
Until next time!
People interested in the technological singularity often have strangely contradictory attitudes regarding AGI (artificial general intelligence) development. On one hand, progress towards AGI in terms of hardware, software, design and theory is all very exciting and generally super cool. Yay, all hail AGI progress! On the other hand, many of these people, often the very same people, believe that the development of a powerful AGI might well spell the end of humanity. Hssss, booo! I’ll admit to being one of these somewhat contradicted people myself.
Now, I understand that a really wonderfully nice AGI is probably a very good thing, and a flawed one is probably bad news. We can all support efforts to push AGI towards the more desirable types of outcomes. But what about AGI research in general? That is, the work that goes into trying to figure out how to make artificial systems more powerful and general, in other words, more intelligent. Is this a good thing? Is it a bad thing?
More pointedly: Imagine that you seriously thought that you might be able to build the first AGI. Other people might think you’re deluded, and maybe they are right. Nevertheless, from where you stand it looks like you have a real chance of making it happen. Would you go ahead and actually try to do it?
Please share your thoughts in the Comments thread.
(Ed: Shane recently published his dissertation, “Machine Super Intelligence.” In July, he received a $10,000 grant from Singularity Institute Canada for his ongoing work on AGI theory. He’s currently a postdoc researcher at the Swiss Finance Institute. For more on Shane, see his Vetta Project blog.)
Singularity
—by K. Y. Zeng
A sound, so heavy
Beyond the warped gravity—
Challenging time and space, sinking
All the neutrinos
At free range
Human imagination soaring
And frightening: should I be afraid —
Biological compass missing?
In the universe of unknown, would
Artificial intelligence be a better solution?
The sound continues to sink
Into the hearts, of earthlings—
Where are the songs from Machu Picchu?
Can I still dance into the harmonious beats?
That, solely belongs to Homo sapiens!
The sound passes by
But no one can hear a thing. It is—
Deafening, to the ears
Made with amino acids
Transcribed by DNA strings
In strike, the bionics
For not getting enough compensation
From robots, friendly robots—
Masters of the metaverse
In the algorithmic matrix—
Where a different sound is roaming
It is the transcending Om
Of zeros and ones. A new melody—
On the horizon
For brave souls,
Joined by nanoparticles
And molecular computers, with
The mythical universal codes—
In the hands of dreamers who
Hoping to end the evolutionary aging
Yet, obstacles inevitable
Planet citizens far from all noble—
Friendliness is the goal
For peace, and for the better future
Of forever changing earthly world
May God bless
The world of Gods?
May the Lord bring balance
To the world of creators—
Only hope
Earlier this week, the New York Times featured Vernor Vinge’s ideas and his novel Rainbow’s End. The novel describes a world on the cusp of of the Singularity, whose populace live in a state of continuous connectivity to everyone and everything in their environment. For those familiar with Vinge’s ideas, the news here is not solely his interview – but that the New York Times is sharing his big ideas with a wide audience.
From the article: “Dr. Vinge is a mathematician and computer scientist in San Diego whose science fiction has won five Hugo Awards and earned good reviews even from engineers analyzing its technical plausibility. He can write space operas with the best of them, but he also suspects that intergalactic sagas could become as obsolete as their human heroes.”
Vernor Vinge will be participating in the Singularity Summit 2008. In 1993, Vinge wrote a paper in which he originated the Singularity concept as it’s defined today. When he realized he was having trouble writing stories about characters in the future that were more intelligent than himself, he considered this an “event horizon” in technological development, leading him to coin the phrase “technological singularity.” His latest writing on the subject is “Signs of the Singularity.” Highly recommended.
See also this video interview with Vinge.
While at Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco (Aug-08), I had the pleasure of watching, from the front row no less, Intel CTO Justin Rattner explain and support the concept of the technological singularity. This is big. I think more high level executives will now discuss this subject without fear of losing their jobs.
Intel predicts singularity by 2048:
Intel’s chief technology officer, Justin Rattner, had his eye firmly fixed on the future at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco.
In his closing keynote speech, Rattner said that Ray Kurzweil’s concept of “the singularity,” a point when human and artificial intelligence merges to create something bigger than itself, could be just 40 years away.
Intel touts progress toward intelligent computers:
At the Intel Developer Forum, Intel Chief Technology Officer Justin Rattner showed off a number of technologies in computing, robotics, and communication that he cited as evidence that Ray Kurzweil’s “singularity,” when machine intelligence surpasses human intelligence, is impending.
“We’re making steady progress toward Ray Kurzweil’s singularity,” Rattner said.
Justin Rattner will speak at the Singularity Summit 2008, October 25th at San Jose. The Singularity Summit is the premier annual event on the singularity, bringing together thoughts leaders in business, science, technology, philanthropy, the arts, and more.
From July 17th-20th, Oxford Future of Humanity Institute hosted the inaugural Global Catastrophic Risks Conference. Online coverage included a CNN article and three write ups from Reason Magazine’s Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey (here, here, here).
In conjunction with the conference, Global Catastrophic Risks (Martin Rees et al. eds.) was published by Oxford University Press. In the edited volume, 26 leading experts look at the gravest risks facing humanity in the 21st century. Highly recommended reading.
