Here is an index of all Singularity Summit speeches.

Summit 2006

• Todd Davies, Tyler Emerson, and Peter Thiel. Introduction to the Singularity Summit.
• Ray Kurzweil. The Singularity: a hard or soft takeoff?
• Douglas Hofstadter. Trying to muse rationally about the Singularity scenario.
• Nick Bostrom. Artificial Intelligence and existential risks.
• Sebastian Thrun. Toward human-level intelligence in autonomous cars.
• Cory Doctorow. Singularity or Dark Age?.
• K. Eric Drexler. Productive Nanosystems: Toward a Super-Exponential Threshold in Physical Technology.
• Max More. Cognitive and Emotional Singularities: Will Superintelligence come with Superwisdom?
• Christine Peterson. Bringing Humanity and the Biosphere through the Singularity
• John Smart. Searching for the Big Picture: Systems Theories of Accelerating Change
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. The Human Importance of the Intelligence Explosion.
• Bill McKibben. Being good enough.
• Ray Kurzweil. Follow up.
• Panel Discussion and Q&A.
• Panel Discussion and Q&A pt. 2.

Summit 2007

• Tyler Emerson & Peter Thiel. Welcome and introduction.
• Rodney Brooks. The Singularity: A Period Not An Event.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. Introducing the “Singularity”: Three Major Schools of Thought.
• Barney Pell. Pathways to Advanced General Intelligence: Architecture, Development, and Funding.
• Wendell Wallach. Superstition and Forgetfulness – Two Essentials for Artificial General Intelligence.
• Barney Pell, Wendell Wallach, Sam Adams. First panel discussion.
• Jamais Cascio. Metaverse Singularity.
• Stephen M. Omohundro. The Nature of Self-Improving Artificial Intelligence.
• Peter Voss. Improved intelligence, improved life.
• Stephen M. Omohundro, Peter Voss. Second panel discussion.
• Neil Jacobstein. Innovative Applications of Early Stage AI.
• Ben Goertzel. Nine Years to a Positive Singularity – If We Really, Really Try.
• Paul Saffo. Machines of Loving Grace: Anticipating Advanced AI.
• Neil Jacobstein, Ben Goertzel, Paul Saffo. Third panel discussion.
• Peter Norvig. The history and future of technological change.
• J. Storrs Hall. Asimov’s laws of robotics — revised.
• Peter Thiel. Financial markets and the Singularity.
• Charles L. Harper, Jr. Superintelligence, the “Dilemma of Power,” and the transformation of desire.
• J. Storrs Hall, Peter Thiel, Charles L. Harper, Jr. Third panel discussion.
• Steve Jurvetson. Dichotomy of designed and evolutionary paths to AI futures.
• Christine L. Peterson. Preparing for bizarreness: open source physical security.
• James Hughes. Waiting for the Great Leap…Forward?
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. The Challenge of Friendly AI.
• Christine L. Peterson, James Hughes, Eliezer Yudkowsky. A dialogue with Ray Kurzweil.

Summit 2008

• Vernor Vinge and Bob Pisani. Conversation on the Singularity.
• Esther Dyson. 23andme and personal genomics.
• James Miller. Societal reactions to the Singularity.
• Eric Baum. AI and the problem of understanding.
• Dharmendra Modha. IBM’s research into Whole Brain Emulation.
• Ben Goertzel. OpenCog — an open source AGI project.
• Marshall Brain. Robotics and structural unemployment.
• Cynthia Breazeal. Social robots.
• Ray Kurzweil, Glen Zorpette and John Horgan. Debate on the Singularity.
• Pete Estep. The InnerSpace Foundation.
• Neil Gershenfeld. Alternate models of computing.
• Peter Diamandis. History of the X Prize Foundation and future X Prizes.
• Ray Kurzweil. Exponential progress in information technologies.
• Justin Rattner. Intel and the continuous of Moore’s law.
• Nova Spivack. Collective intelligence and the emerging global brain.

Summit 2009

• Michael Vassar. Introduction.
• Anna Salamon. Shaping the intelligence explosion.
• Anders Sandberg. Technical roadmap for whole brain emulation.
• Randal Koene. The time is now: as a species we need whole brain emulation.
• Itamar Arel. Technological convergence leading to artificial general intelligence.
• Ben Goertzel. Pathways to beneficial artificial general intelligence.
• Stuart Hameroff. Neural substrates of consciousness and the ‘conscious pilot’ model.
• David Chalmers. Simulation and the singularity.
• Gary Drescher. Choice machines, causality, and cooperation.
• Ed Boyden. Synthetic neurobiology: optically engineering the brain to augment its function.
• Marcus Hutter. Foundations of intelligent agents.
• William Dickens. Cognitive ability: past and future enhancements and implications.
• Ray Kurzweil. The ubiquity and predictability of the exponential growth of information technology.
• Bela Nagy. More than Moore: comparing forecasts of technological progress.
• Robin Hanson. How does society identify experts, and when does it work?
• Panel: Future of scientific method.
• Gregory Benford. Artificial biological selection for longevity.
• Ray Kurzweil. Critics of the singularity.
• Brad Templeton. The finger of AI: Automated electrical vehicles and oil independence.
• Gary Marcus. The fallibility and improvability of the human mind.
• Peter Thiel. Macroeconomics and singularity.
• Aubrey de Grey. The Singularity and the Methuselarity: similarities and differences.
• Thiel, Yudkowsky & de Grey panel: Changing the world.
• Anna Salamon. How much it matters to know what matters: A back of the envelope calculation.
• Gary Wolf. The petaflop macroscope.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. Cognitive biases and giant risks.
• Jurgen Schmidhuber. Compression progress: The algorithmic principle behind curiosity and creativity.
• Thiel, Rose & Gorenberg Panel: Venture capitalism.
• Michael Nielsen. Quantum computing: What it is, what it is not, what we have yet to learn.
• Michael Nielsen. Collaborative networks in scientific discovery.
• Stephen Wolfram. Conversation on the singularity.

Summit 2010

• Michael Vassar. The Darwinian method.
• Gregory Stock. Evolution of post-human intelligence.
• Ray Kurzweil. The mind and how to build one.
• Ben Goertzel. AI against aging.
• Steven Mann. Humanistic intelligence augmentation and mediation.
• Mandayam Srinivasan. Enhancing our bodies and evolving our brains.
• Brian Litt. The past, present and future of brain machine interfaces.
• Demis Hassabis. Combining systems neuroscience and machine learning: a new approach to AGI.
• Terry Sejnowski. Reverse-engineering brains is within reach.
• Dennis Bray. What cells can do that robots can’t.
• Terry Sejnowski/Dennis Bray debate: Simplified humanism and positive futurism.
• Ramez Naam. The digital biome.
• Lance Becker. Modifying the boundary between life and death.
• Ellen Heber-Katz. The MRL mouse – how it regenerates and how we might do the same.
• Shane Legg. Universal measures of intelligence.
• John Tooby. Can discovering the design principles governing natural intelligence unleash breakthroughs in AI?.
• Tooby, Goertzel, Yudkowsky & Legg panel. Narrow and General Intelligence.
• David Hanson. David Hanson: Why Characters Are Key to Friendly A.I..
• Irene Pepperberg. Irene Pepperberg: Nonhuman Intelligence: Where we are and where we’re headed.
• James Randi. Is there such a thing as scientific consensus?

Summit 2011

• Ray Kurzweil. From Eliza to Watson to passing the Turing Test.
• Stephen Badylak. Regenerative medicine: possibilities and potential.
• Sonia Arrison. 100 Plus: how the coming age of longevity will change everything, from careers and relationships to family and faith.
• Peter Thiel. Back to the future.
• James McLurkin. The future of robotics is swarms: why a thousand robots are better than one.
• Michael Shermer. Social Singularity: transitioning from civilization 1.0 to 2.0.
• Jason Silva. The ‘Undivided Mind’ — science and imagination.
• Stephen Wolfram. Computation and the future of mankind.
• Dmitry Itskov. Project ‘Immortality 2045′ — Russian experience.
• Christof Koch. The neurobiology and mathematics of consciousness.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. Open problems in friendly artificial intelligence.
• Max Tegmark. The future of life: a cosmic perspective.
• Alexander Wissner-Gross. Planetary-scale intelligence.
• Sharon Bertsch McGrayne. So you want to make gods. Now why would that bother anybody?
• Tyler Cowen. The Great Stagnation.
• Tyler Cowen & Michael Vassar. Debate on the Great Stagnation.
• John Mauldin. The endgame meets The millennium wave — why the economic crisis will be history as we create the future.
• Riley Crane. Rethinking communication.
• Dileep George and Scott Brown. From planes to brains: building AI the Wright way.
• Jaan Tallinn. Balancing the trichotomy: individual vs. society vs. universe.
• David Ferrucci. Watson AI perceptions.
• Dan Cerutti. Commercializing Watson.
• Ken Jennings. The human brain in Jeopardy: computers that ‘think’.

Interested in emerging technologies?
Fascinated by the potential in transformative nanotech?
Come explore the future with…

FORESIGHT@GOOGLE
25th Anniversary Conference Celebration and Reunion Weekend
Google HQ in Mountain View, CA
June 25-26 2011

A rockstar lineup of speakers and panelists include:
• WILLIAM ANDREGG - Founder/CEO of Halcyon Molecular
• MIKE GARNER, PhD - Chair of ITRS Emerging Research Materials
• MIKE NELSON - CTO of NanoInk
• LUKE NOSEK - CoFounder of Paypal, Founders Fund Partner
• Keynote: BARNEY PELL, PhD - Cofounder/CTO of Moon Express
• PAUL SAFFO, PhD - Wired, NYT-published strategist & forecaster
• SIR FRASER STODDART, PhD - Knighted for creation of molecular “switches” and a new field of nanochemistry
• THOMAS THEIS, PhD - IBM’s Director of Physical Sciences
• Keynote: JIM VON EHR - Founder/President of Zyvex, the world’s first successful molecular nanotech company

For the full speaker roster, as well as information on our exclusive 25th Anniversary Banquet, see our conference website:
http://www.foresight.org/reunion

Space is limited!

For $50 off, register now with our organization’s special discount code: SIAI

The first ever Singularity Summit Australia will be held on September 7th, 11th, and 12th at Casey Plaza at RMIT, Melbourne. Here’s the news release:

Singularity Summit 2010 in Melbourne Victoria to explore emerging technological trends
Speakers include AI Architect Hugo deGaris, Futurist Peter Ellyard

Melbourne Victoria 2010 — Will it be one day become possible to boost human intelligence using brain implants, or create an artificial intelligence smarter than Einstein? In a 1993 paper presented to NASA, science fiction author and mathematician Vernor Vinge called such a hypothetical event a “Singularity”, saying “From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye”. Vinge pointed out that intelligence enhancement could lead to “closing the loop” between intelligence and technology, creating a positive feedback effect.

This September 7th, 10-12th, hundreds of AI researchers, robotics experts, philosophers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and interested laypeople will converge in Melbourne to address the Singularity and related issues at the only conference on the topic in Australia, the Singularity Summit. Experts in fields including artificial intelligence, bio-ethics, tissue regeneration, medical ethics, computational neurobiology, cryonics, futurism, and more will share their latest research, brightest ideas, and explore their implications for the future of humanity.

“This is the first Singularity Summit outside the US, and will be a great event,” said Adam Ford, coordinator of the Singularity Institute Australia, which is hosting the event.

Russell Blackford, editor of “50 Voices of Disbelief” who is a contributor to IEET, will explore the ethical and practical implications of key emerging technological trends. Futurist Peter Ellyard will discuss opportunities that innovation and technology can provide and his book ‘Designing 2050′.

Interested readers can watch videos from past summits and register at http://summit.singinst.org.au.

On the evening of Saturday, August 14th, join us for exciting discussions with Summit Speakers at a cocktail reception hosted by the Singularity Institute. This event will feature the opportunity to meet with speakers at the 2010 Singularity Summit, the world’s premier conference on the technological Singularity, held in San Francisco on August 14th and 15th. The meeting will be held at the Infinity Towers in San Francisco. Tickets are limited to 70. For more information, contact Singularity Institute COO Amy Willey at amywilley@singinst.org. Register today!

Humanity+, the worldwide association of transhumanists, is putting on a conference at Harvard on June 12-13. Tickets are available here (be sure to use that specific URL to register so SIAI can earn 20% of ticket cost as a referral bonus). The theme is “rise of the citizen scientist”. Here is all the blurb:

The summer 2010 “Humanity+ @ Harvard – The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist” conference is being held, after the inaugural conference in Los Angeles in December 2009, on the East Coast, at Harvard University’s prestigious Science Hall on June 12-13. Futurist, inventor, and author of the NYT bestselling book “The Singularity Is Near”, Ray Kurzweil is going to be keynote speaker of the conference. Full information is at http://hplussummit.com

Also speaking at the H+ Summit @ Harvard is Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation, a California-based charity dedicated to combating the aging process. His talk, “Hype and anti-hype in academic biogerontology research: a call to action”, will analyze the interplay of over-pessimistic and over-optimistic positions with regards of research and development of cures, and propose solutions to alleviate the negative effects of both.

The theme is “The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist”, as illustrated in his talk by Alex Lightman, Executive Director of Humanity+:

“Knowledge may be expanding exponentially, but the current rate of civilizational learning and institutional upgrading is still far too slow in the century of peak oil, peak uranium, and “peak everything”. Humanity needs to gather vastly more data as part of ever larger and more widespread scientific experiments, and make science and technology flourish in streets, fields, and homes as well as in university and corporate laboratories.”

Humanity+ Summit @ Harvard is an unmissable event for everyone who is interested in the evolution of the rapidly changing human condition, and the impact of accelerating technological change on the daily lives of individuals, and on our society as a whole. Tickets start at only $150, with an additional 50% discount for students registering with the coupon STUDENTDISCOUNT (valid student ID required at the time of admission).

With over 40 speakers, and 50 sessions in two jam packed days, the attendees, and the speakers will have many opportunities to interact, and discuss, complementing the conference with the necessary networking component.

Other speakers already listed on the H+ Summit program page include:

* David Orban, Chairman of Humanity+: “Intelligence Augmentation,
Decision Power, And The Emerging Data Sphere”
* Heather Knight, CTO of Humanity+: “Why Robots Need to Spend More
Time in the Limelight”
* Andrew Hessel, Co-Chair at Singularity University: “Altered
Carbon: The Emerging Biological Diamond Age”
* M. A. Greenstein, Art Center College of Design: “Sparking our
Neural Humanity with Neurotech!”
* Michael Smolens, CEO of dotSUB: “Removing language as a barrier to
cross cultural communication”

New speakers will be announced in rapid succession, rounding out a schedule that is guaranteed to inform, intrigue, stimulate and provoke, in moving ahead our planetary understanding of the evolution of the human condition!

H+ Summit @ Harvard – The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist
June 12-13, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

When you register, please use the URL
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/648806598/friendsofhplus/4283047925 for
tracking purposes.

Amnon Eden, an organizer of the European conference on Computing And Philosophy, recently sent us this call for papers.

Track in:

8th European conference on Computing And Philosophy — ECAP 2010
Technische Universität München
4–6 October 2010

Important dates:

* Submission (extended abstracts): 7 May 2010
* Notification: 9 May 2010
* ECAP Conference: 4–6 October 2010

Submission form

Theme

Historical analysis of a broad range of paradigm shifts in science, biology, history, technology, and in particular in computing technology, suggests an accelerating rate of evolution, however measured. John von Neumann projected that the consequence of this trend may be an “essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue”. This notion of singularity coincides in time and nature with Alan Turing (1950) and Stephen Hawking’s (1998) expectation of machines to exhibit intelligence on a par with to the average human no later than 2050. Irving John Good (1965) and Vernor Vinge (1993) expect the singularity to take the form of an ‘intelligence explosion’, a process in which intelligent machines design ever more intelligent machines. Transhumanists suggest a parallel or alternative, explosive process of improvements in human intelligence. And Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave (1980) forecasts “a collision point in human destiny” the scale of which, in the course of history, is on the par only with the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.

We invite submissions describing systematic attempts at understanding the likelihood and nature of these projections. In particular, we welcome papers critically analyzing the following issues from a philosophical, computational, mathematical, scientific and ethical standpoints:

* Claims and evidence to acceleration
* Technological predictions (critical analysis of past and future)
* The nature of an intelligence explosion and its possible outcomes
* The nature of the Technological Singularity and its outcome
* Safe and unsafe artificial general intelligence and preventative measures
* Technological forecasts of computing phenomena and their projected impact
* Beyond the ‘event horizon’ of the Technological Singularity
* The prospects of transhuman breakthroughs and likely timeframes

Amnon H. Eden, School of Computer Science & Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, UK and Center For Inquiry, Amherst NY

Thanks to all 813 people who attended the Singularity Summit! The event was a huge success. If you want to buy a T-shirt to commemorate the event, you can do so here.

Patri Friedman, Executive Director of the Seasteading Institute and a friend of SIAI, invites SIAI supporters to attend his organization’s conference, from September 28 - 30 in San Francisco, and Ephemerisle, a “floating festival of politics, community, and art”, in the Sacramento River Delta on October 2-4.

SIAI Director of Research Dr. Ben Goertzel will be speaking at Yale on May 6 on “The Ethics of Creating Human-Level AI”

Date: Wednesday ? May 6th
Time: 4:15-6:00 workshop (Snacks and drinks will be served.)
Location: 77 Trumbull St (corner Prospect? Entrance in the new addition on Prospect) - Yale Univ. Institution for Social and Policy Studies ? lower level seminar room.

Abstract: In this talk I will give a high-level overview of a number of issues related to the ethics of creating human-level AI, capped off with some reflections on what this topic tells us about “ethics” as a general (and human) notion. Among the issues raised: the ethics of experimenting on engineered minds; the existential and other risks posed by the creation of AI systems more powerful than humans; the ethics of uploading and technology-enabled transcension; and the creation of ethical goal systems for advanced AI’s including those with strong capabilities for self-modification. Each of these issues has its own subtleties, and each raises the broader question of the extent to which “ethics” itself is a human-specific construct versus something with broader applicability. The possibility of ethical principles transcending the particulars of any particular type of intelligence is discussed, including versions of the categorical imperative, and abstracted versions of notions such as joy, growth and choice.

Open to everyone (undergraduates, graduate students, faculty, administration, and community members) whether or not you have participated in previous sessions of the Technology and Ethics Working Group.

Please RSVP to bioethics.center@yale.edu if you plan to attend.

The Technology and Ethics Working Research Group is a project of the Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics ? Tech & Ethics
Chair: Wendell Wallach

The deadline for submissions to all conference tracks at the European Conference on Philosophy and Computing, ECAP’09, has been extended, including the track on Technological Singularity and Acceleration Studies.

The new date is 16 March 2009.

Details at our earlier blog post and at the conference site.

The Second Conference on Artificial General Intelligence will be held March 6-9 in Arlington, Virginia.

The Conference Chair is SIAI Director of Research Dr. Ben Goertzel, and SIAI Scientific Advisor Dr. Moshe Looks is on the program committee. Goertzel and Looks will be speaking at the conference.

The post-conference workshop, on the 9th, will address the future of AI.

SIAI Advisor Dr. Steve Omohundro will speak on “Creating a Cooperative Future” at an AI Meetup sponsored by Global Futures.

Feb. 22 in the Bay Area. See Facebook for details.

The Artificial Brain Laboratory at Xiamen University has announced a three-week summer school in Artificial General Intelligence, June 22 to July 10, 2009.

The course is aimed at graduate students and postdoctoral researchers, although it may also be appropriate for some advanced undergraduates and independent or industry researchers.

Instructors are international researchers experienced in various areas of Artificial General Intelligence and related fields, among them Dr. Ben Goertzel, SIAI Director of Research; and Dr. Joel Pitt, whom SIAI has engaged to work on the OpenCog project.

More information and registration details here.