A blog focusing on some of the most prominent “-isms” surrounding humanity’s technological future: extropianism, transhumanism, posthumanism, the mouth-filling Singularitarianism, and others in that constellation.
October 4, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City.] Next up next is Gregory Benford, the astrophysicist and science fiction author, on “Artificial Biological Selection for Longevity.” (Abstract and bio.) His talk is so far pretty straightforward: figuring out genes that cause disease and eliminating them,...
October 4, 2009
Day two of the 2009 Singularity Summit is back underway here in New York. They front-loaded the summit today with short talks by smaller-name speakers on topics that were pretty peripheral to the Singularity. Typical setup for a conference, but I decided to spare my sanity by skipping those first few. Just starting now is a panel...
October 4, 2009
It was with that remark that the M.C. closed the proceedings on the first day of the 2009 Singularity Summit here in New York City. I’ll do a full retrospective at the end of the conference, but will offer just a short wrap-up for the first day. Today’s talks were, for the most part, rather dry and technical. Technical is...
October 3, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] And now, the big man himself. The M.C. introduces Ray Kurzweil with effusive praise, saying he’s the reason we’re all here. There’s certainly some truth to that: Kurzweil’s pop-sci books, culminating with The Singularity is Near, have done much to stir up...
October 3, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] The penultimate talk of the first day comes from William Dickens of Northeastern University. He’s talking on “Cognitive Ability: Past and Future Enhancements and Implications.” (Abstract and bio.) Dickens is extolling the virtues of the embattled IQ test. He says it...
October 3, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Up next, all the way from Australia, is Marcus Hutter on “Foundations of Intelligent Agents.” (Abstract and bio, plus his homepage.) He says that the topic of his talk is not enhancing natural systems, but in designing first principles for creating artificial intelligence...
October 3, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] I skipped blogging on the last talk by Gary Drescher (abstract and bio), which was a dense philosophical lecture about game theory and optimal choices. I couldn’t possibly have condensed it, and it wasn’t especially relevant to the Singularity either. (He tried to tie it...
October 3, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Next up, David Chalmers. He’s a rock-star philosopher, like Ian Malcolm. The title of his talk is “Simulation and the Singularity.” (Abstract and bio here.) Chalmers isn’t talking about the philosophical requirements of simulation. He’s breaking down the...
October 3, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Next up: not a talk but a conversation between Stephen Wolfram, the mathematician and software developer, and Gregory Benford, the science fiction writer and astrophysicist. Wolfram starts by describing Wolfram Alpha, the recently-released search engine that is supposed to answer...
October 3, 2009
[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Juergen Schmidhuber’s talk is underway now: “Compression Progress: The Algorithmic Principle Behind Curiosity, Creativity, Art, Science, Music, Humor.” (Abstract and bio available here.) Dude has an immediate stage presence. Charming German accent,...