Liveblogging the Singularity Summit

For those of you just tuning in, I’m at the Singularity Summit in New York City, and will be liveblogging the event all today and tomorrow. We’re nearing the end of today’s lunch break, which means the Singularity Summit is already a quarter of the way over. Oh, how the good times fly. I’ve taken the opportunity...

On quantum computing (and consciousness)

[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Michael Nielsen is beginning his talk, “Quantum Computing: What It Is, What It Is Not, What We Have Yet to Learn.” (Abstract and bio available here.) He promises it will be a broad overview. I hope so after that last talk. He’s talking about the dangers of the models...

“Conscious Pilot” talk doesn’t take flight

[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Stuart Hameroff has started his talk, “Neural Substrates of Consciousness and the ‘Conscious Pilot’ Model.” He’s plowing right into cognition and consciousness. (Abstract and bio available here.) Tossing aside the “easy problems” of cognition — the nonconscious...

“Pathways to Beneficial Artificial General Intelligence”

[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Ben Goertzel of Novamente is starting his talk, entitled “Pathways to Beneficial Artificial General Intelligence: Virtual Pets, Robot Children, Artificial Bioscientists, and Beyond.” (Abstract and bio available here.) He says when he gave a talk in 2006, it was called...

“Technological Convergence Leading to Artificial General Intelligence”

[Continuing coverage of the 2009 Singularity Summit.] Another talk is underway now, this one titled “Technological Convergence Leading to Artificial General Intelligence” by Itamar Arel of the University of Tennessee. (Abstract and bio available here.) Arel says he wants to focus on AI achieved in a much shorter timeframe...

“We need whole brain emulation”

I’m liveblogging the Singularity Summit today and tomorrow. I’ll forgo an introductory post on the summit for now, and just get right into the talk that’s just begun, “The time is now: As a species and as individuals we need whole brain emulation” by Randal Koene, a European neuroengineer and the proprieter...

Hello, World!

Forgive the title, but I’m writing my first post for this blog from a conference full of fellow computer nerds. I have little to add to Adam’s thoughtful introduction, which speaks well for the methods and aims of this blog, so I’d just like to describe a little more about myself and what I hope to do here. I am a...

Watch this space

This weekend — October 3 and 4, 2009 — there will be a “Singularity Summit” in New York City, the latest in a series dating back to 2006. Ari Schulman will be in the room, liveblogging the event, and we expect to have regular coverage and commentary throughout. (Five years ago, when blogging was still fresh and liveblogging...

Introducing “Futurisms”

It is a pleasure to inaugurate this New Atlantis blog focusing on some of the most prominent “-isms” surrounding humanity’s technological future: transhumanism, posthumanism, extropianism, the mouth-filling Singularitarianism, and others in that constellation. It can be difficult for the uninitiated to keep these terms straight,...