Singularity Institute Activities

Bugmaster asks:

…what does the SIAI actually do? You don’t submit your work to rigorous scrutiny by your peers in the field… you either aren’t doing any AGI research, or are keeping it so secret that no one knows about it… and you aren’t developing any practical applications of AI, either… So, what is it that you are actually working on, other than growing the SIAI itself ?

It’s a good question, and my own biggest concern right now. Donors would like to know: Where is the visible return on investment? How can I see that I’m buying existential risk reduction when I donate to the Singularity Institute?

SI has a problem, here, because it has done so much invisible work lately. Our researchers have done a ton of work that hasn’t been written up and published yet; Eliezer has been writing his rationality books that aren’t yet published; Anna and Eliezer have been developing a new rationality curriculum for the future “Rationality Org” that will be spun off from the Singularity Institute; Carl has been doing a lot of mostly invisible work in the optimal philanthropy community; and so on. I believe this is all valuable x-risk-reducing work, but of course not all of our supporters are willing to just take our word for it that we’re doing valuable work. Our supporters want to see tangible results, and all they see is the Singularity Summit, a few papers a year, some web pages and Less Wrong posts, and a couple rationality training camps. That’s good, but not good enough!

I agree with this concern, which is why I’m focused on doing things that happen to be both x-risk-reducing and visible.

First, we’ve been working on visible “meta” work that makes the Singularity Institute more transparent and effective in general: a strategic plan, a donor database (“visible” to donors in the form of thank-yous), a new website (forthcoming), and an annual report (forthcoming).

Second, we’re pushing to publish more research results this year. We have three chapters forthcoming in The Singularity Hypothesis, one chapter forthcoming in The Cambridge Handbook of Artificial Intelligence, one forthcoming article on the difficulty of AI, and several other articles and working papers we’re planning to publish in 2012. I’ve also begun writing the first comprehensive outline of open problems in Singularity research, so that interested researchers from around the world can participate in solving the world’s most important problems.

Third, there is visible rationality work forthcoming. One of Eliezer’s books is now being shopped to agents and publishers, and we’re field-testing different versions of rationality curriculum material for use in Less Wrong meetups and classes.

Fourth, we’re expanding the Singularity Summit brand, an important platform for spreading the memes of x-risk reduction and AI safety.

So my answer is to the question is: “Yes, visible return on investment has been a problem lately due to our choice of projects. Even before I was made Executive Director, it was one of my top concerns to help correct that situation, and this is still the case today.”

What if?

XiXiDu asks:

What would SI do if it became apparent that AGI is at most 10 years away?

This would be a serious problem because by default, AGI will be extremely destructive, and we don’t yet know how to make AGI not be destructive.

What would we do if we thought AGI was at most 10 years away?

This depends on whether it’s apparent to a wider public that AGI is at most 10 years away, or a conclusion based only on a nonpublic analysis.

If it becomes apparent to a wide variety of folks that AGI is close, then it should be much easier to get people and support for Friendly AI work, so a big intensification of effort would be a good move. If the analysis that AGI is 10 years away leads to hundreds of well-staffed and well-funded AGI research programs and a rich public literature, then trying to outrace the rest with a Friendly AI project becomes much harder. After an intensified Friendly AI effort, one could try to build up knowledge in Friendly AI theory and practice that could be applied (somewhat less effectively) to systems not designed from the ground up for Friendliness. This knowledge could then be distributed widely to increase the odds of a project pulling through, calling in real Friendliness experts, etc. But in general, a widespread belief that AGI is only 10 years away would be a much hairier situation than the one we’re in now.

But if the basis for thinking AI was 10 years away was nonpublic (but nonetheless persuasive to supporters who have lots of resources), then it could be used to differentially attract support to a Friendly AI project, hopefully without provoking dozens of AGI teams to intensify their efforts. So if we had a convincing case that AGI was only 10 years away, we might not publicize this but would instead make the case to individual supporters that we needed to immediately intensify our efforts toward a theory of Friendly AI in a way that only much greater funding can allow.

Budget

MileyCyrus asks:

What kind of budget would be required to solve the friendly AI problem?

Large research projects always come with large uncertainties concerning how difficult they will be, especially ones that require fundamental breakthroughs in mathematics and philosophy like Friendly AI does.

Even a small, 10-person team of top-level Friendly AI researchers taking academic-level salaries for a decade would require tens of millions of dollars. And even getting to the point where you can raise that kind of money requires a slow “ramping up” of researcher recruitment and output. We need enough money to attract the kinds of mathematicians who are also being recruited by hedge funds, Google, and the NSA, and have a funded “chair” for each of them such that they can be prepared to dedicate their careers to the problem. That part alone requires tens of millions of dollars for just a few researchers.

Other efforts like the Summit, Less Wrong, outreach work, and early publications cost money, and they work toward having the community and infrastructure required to start funding chairs for top-level mathematicians to be career Friendly AI researchers. This kind of work costs between $500,000 and $3 million per year, with more money per year of course producing more progress.

Predictions

Wix asks:

How much do members’ predictions of when the singularity will happen differ within the Singularity Institute?

I asked some Singularity Institute staff members to answer a slightly different question, one pulled from the Future of Humanity Institute’s 2011 machine intelligence survey:

Assuming no global catastrophe halts progress, by what year would you assign a 10%/50%/90% chance of the development of human-level machine intelligence? Feel free to answer ‘never’ if you believe such a milestone will never be reached.

In short, the survey participants’ median estimates (excepting 5 outliers) for 10%/50%/90% were:

2028 / 2050 / 2150

Here are five of the Singularity Institute’s staff members’ responses, names unattached, for the years by which they would assign a 10%/50%/90% chance of HLAI creation, conditioning on no global catastrophe halting scientific progress:

2025 / 2073 / 2168
2030 / 2060 / 2200
2027 / 2055 / 2160
2025 / 2045 / 2100
2040 / 2080 / 2200

Those are all the answers I had time to prepare in this round; I hope they are helpful!

The Singularity Institute and existential risk mitigation were recently covered in a special feature in Bloomberg Businessweek, and the article was syndicated on various websites, including SFGate.com. Bloomberg Businessweek has a circulation of approximately one million. A scan of the feature is available here.

Delta robot is one kind of robot that is used to pick up objects and move it to the production track with a very fast movement. This robot is very widely used in industry to accelerate the production process.

The Delta robot (a parallel arm robot) was invented in the early 1980s by Reymond Clavel at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland). The purpose of this new type of robot was to manipulate light and small objects at a very high speed, an industrial need at that time. In 1987, the company Demaurex purchased a license for the Delta robot and started the production of Delta robots for the packaging industry. In 1991 Reymond Clavel presents his doctoral thesis ‘Conception d’un robot parallèle rapide à 4 degrés de liberté’ and receives the golden robot award in 1999 for his work and development of the Delta robot. Also in 1999, ABB Flexible Automation starts selling its Delta robot, the FlexPicker. By the end of 1999 the Delta robots are also sold by Sigpack Systems.

The Delta robot is a parallel robot, i.e. it consists of multiple kinematic chains interconnecting the base with the platform. The robot can also be seen as a spatial generalisation of a four-bar linkage. It has four degrees of freedom: three translational and one rotational. The key concept of the Delta robot is the use of parallelograms. These parallelograms restrict the movement of the end platform to pure translation (only movement in the X, Y or Z direction). The robot’s base is mounted above the workspace. All the actuators are located in this base. From the base, three middle jointed arms extend. The arms are made of lightweight composite material. The ends of the three arms are connected to a small triangular platform. Actuation of the input links will move the triangular platform in the X, Y or Z direction. Actuation can be done with linear or rotational actuators. From the base, a fourth leg extends to the middle of the triangular platform to give the end effector a fourth, rotational degree of freedom.

Because the actuators are all located in the base, and the arms can be made of a light composite material the moving parts of the Delta robot have a small inertia. This allows for very high accelerations. Accelerations can be up to 30 g and speeds of 10 m/s can be reached.

Industries that take advantage of the high speed of the Delta robot are the packaging industry, medical and pharmaceutical industry. Other possible applications include assembly tasks or operation in a clean room for electronic components. The structure of the Delta robot can also be used to create haptic controllers, such as the Force Dimension omega.x, delta.x and sigma.x devices, or the Novint Falcon game controller.

Delta Robot Video:

Noteworthy happenings in the world of SIAI

Overview

2011 has been a busy year for Singularity Institute. We held two small conferences in Salt Lake City, conducted a week-long Rationality Minicamp and nine week Rationality Boot Camp in Berkeley, established the Research Associates program, have given presentations at over a dozen meetings and conferences, published an accessible Singularity FAQ, and engaged in academic outreach through collaboration and websites such as IntelligenceExplosion.com. We also released our Strategic Plan which outlines our goals for 2011-2012. These include developing our Friendly AI research program in pursuit of our core mission, expanding the rationality community, bringing on new Research Associates, and holding Singularity Summit events in more venues worldwide.

You can always stay up to date on the latest news at Singularity Institute at the Singularity Institute Blog.

Singularity Summit 2011

Registration for this event is open now! Register promptly to ensure seating.

https://www.singularitysummit.com/registration/

The Singularity Summit 2011 will be held at the 92nd St. Y in New York City on October 15-16, starting at 9AM. The event, which has been covered by top-tier publications such as TIME magazine and Scientific American, will explore the historic victory of the IBM computer Watson in a match of Jeopardy! earlier this year. Ken Jennings, who won 74 consecutive matches of Jeopardy in 2004 only to lose to the Watson computer in a decisive match in 2011, will keynote, along with Ray Kurzweil, the acclaimed futurist and inventor whose name is synonymous with the Singularity and advanced artificial intelligence. Luminaries in business, science, technology, and public policy will present: economist Tyler Cowen, neuroscientist Christof Koch, roboticist Robin Murphy, skeptic Michael Shermer, cosmologist Max Tegmark, venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn, television personality Jason Silva, and many more!

For an official press release describing the event, visit PRWeb. To register, visit the following link:

https://www.singularitysummit.com/registration/

The price goes up $100 at the end of this month, so register now!

Companies and organizations interested in sponsoring the Summit, and receiving extensive promotion and privileges in return, should contact SIAI officer Amy Willey at admin@singinst.org.

New York Academy of Sciences Speaker Series: “Being Human in the 21st Century”

Our partners at the New York Academy of Sciences are holding an event series from September 6th to February 15th which will explore issues of interest to Singularity Institute supporters and Singularity Summit enthusiasts. The first event, on September 6th, will feature Joshua Foer, author of the best-selling book, Moonwalking with Einstein, that explores the limits of human memory. This event will provide an opportunity for Singularity Summit attendees in the New York area to get to know each other prior to the Singularity Summit conference, and to discuss issues around what it means to be human in the 21st Century.

You can register for the NYAS speaker series here:

http://www.nyas.org/beinghuman

Singularity FAQ Released

The Singularity Institute published a Singularity FAQ to clarify basic issues related to Singularity and our mission, answering questions like “How Likely is an Intelligence Explosion?” and “What is Friendly AI?” The Singularity FAQ provides both the basics for those new to the Singularity Institute’s work, and more detailed answers for those already familiar. After reading Singularity FAQ, please tell us: what did you think? We welcome feedback, suggestions, and dialogue from everyone.

Along the same lines, we recently put up IntelligenceExplosion.com as a collection of references to the intelligence explosion concept.

Research Associates Program

On July 22nd we announced the new Research Associates Program. Research associates are chosen for their excellent thinking ability and their passion for our core mission. Research associates are not salaried staff, but we encourage their Friendly AI-related research outputs by, for example, covering their travel costs for conferences at which they present academic work relevant to our mission.

Our five Research Associates are:

Daniel Dewey, an AI researcher, holds a B.S. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. He recently presented his paper ‘Learning What to Value’ at the AGI-11 conference in August.

Vladimir Nesov, a decision theory researcher, holds an M.S. in applied mathematics and physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He has worked on Wei Dai’s updateless decision theory, in pursuit of one of the Singularity Institute’s core research goals: that of developing a ‘reflective decision theory.’

Joshua Fox studies the theory of superintelligence, developing models of agents with greater than human optimization power. He has served as a software architect at various start-ups and growth companies, and now works at IBM leading the development of a software product. He holds a BA summa cum laude in mathematics from Brandeis University and a PhD from Harvard University.

Steve Rayhawk is a researcher interested in applying computational Bayesian decision theory to problems in technological forecasting, risk management policy, and social epistemology. He holds a degree from the mathematics program of the UC Santa Barbara College of Creative Studies.

Peter de Blanc, an AI researcher, holds an M.A. in mathematics from Temple University. He has written several papers on goal systems for decision-theoretic agents, including ‘Convergence of Expected Utility for Universal AI’ and ‘Ontological Crises in Artificial Agents’ Value Systems.’

We’re excited to welcome Daniel, Vladimir, Joshua, Steve, and Peter to our Research Associates team!

Volunteers Program Goes Public at www.SingularityVolunteers.org!

Do you want to volunteer for Singularity Institute? Now it’s easier than ever! Our newly re-vamped volunteer website has now been made public and offers dozens of opportunities for involvement. Check out www.SingularityVolunteers.org today to see how you can help Singularity Institute work towards a positive Singularity from anywhere in the world.

Thank you for your support of Singularity Institute in pursuit of our mission for a beneficial Singularity.

http://singinst.org

Do you want to volunteer for Singularity Institute? Now it’s easier than ever! Our newly re-vamped volunteer website has now been made public and offers dozens of opportunities for involvement. Check out www.SingularityVolunteers.org today to see how you can help Singularity Institute work toward a positive Singularity, from anywhere in the world.

Thanks to the generosity of several major donors^†, every donation to the Singularity Institute made now until August 31, 2011 will be matched dollar-for-dollar, up to a total of $125,000.

(Visit the challenge page to see a progress bar.)

Now is your chance to double your impact while supporting the Singularity Institute and helping us raise up to $250,000 to help fund our research program and stage the upcoming Singularity Summit… which you can register for now!

^† $125,000 in backing for this challenge is being generously provided by Rob Zahra, Quixey, Clippy, Luke Nosek, Edwin Evans, Rick Schwall, Brian Cartmell, Mike Blume, Jeff Bone, Johan Edström, Zvi Mowshowitz, John Salvatier, Louie Helm, Kevin Fischer, Emil Gilliam, Rob and Oksana Brazell, Guy Srinivasan, John Chisholm, and John Ku.

2011 has been a huge year for Artificial Intelligence. With the IBM computer Watson defeating two top Jeopardy! champions in February, it’s clear that the field is making steady progress. Journalists like Torie Bosch of Slate have argued that “We need to move from robot-apocalypse jokes to serious discussions about the emerging technology.” We couldn’t agree more — in fact, the Singularity Institute has been thinking about how to create safe and ethical artificial intelligence since long before the Singularity landed on the front cover of TIME magazine.

The last 1.5 years were our biggest ever. Since the beginning of 2010, we have:

• Held our annual Singularity Summit, in San Francisco. Speakers included Ray Kurzweil, James Randi, Irene Pepperberg, and many others.
• Held the first Singularity Summit Australia and Singularity Summit Salt Lake City.
• Held a wildly successful Rationality Minicamp.
• Published seven research papers, including Yudkowsky’s much-awaited ‘Timeless Decision Theory‘.
• Helped philosopher David Chalmers write his seminal paper ‘The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis‘, which has sparked broad discussion in academia, including an entire issue of Journal of Consciousness Studies and a book from Springer devoted to responses to Chalmers’ paper.
• Launched the Research Associates program.
• Brought MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark onto our advisory board, published our Singularity FAQ, and much more.

In the coming year, we plan to do the following:

• Hold our annual Singularity Summit, in New York City this year.
• Publish three chapters in the upcoming academic volume The Singularity Hypothesis, along with several other papers.
• Improve organizational transparency by creating a simpler, easier-to-use website that includes Singularity Institute planning and policy documents.
• Publish a document of open research problems related to Friendly AI, to clarify the research space and encourage other researchers to contribute to our mission.
• Add additional skilled researchers to our Research Associates program.
• Publish well-researched documents making the case for existential risk reduction as optimal philanthropy.
• Diversify our funding sources by applying for targeted grants and advertising our affinity credit card program.

We appreciate your support for our high-impact work. As PayPal co-founder and Singularity Institute donor Peter Thiel said:

“I’m interested in facilitating a forum in which there can be… substantive research on how to bring about a world in which AI will be friendly to humans rather than hostile… [The Singularity Institute represents] a combination of very talented people with the right problem space [they’re] going after… [They’ve] done a phenomenal job… on a shoestring budget. From my perspective, the key question is always: What’s the amount of leverage you get as an investor? Where can a small amount make a big difference? This is a very leveraged kind of philanthropy.”

Donate now, and seize a better than usual chance to move our work forward. Credit card transactions are securely processed through Causes.com, Google Checkout, or PayPal. If you have questions about donating, please call Amy Willey at (586) 381-1801.

Good news! Capital One is now offering co-branded Singularity Institute credit cards with a cash-back rewards program that automatically donates money to Singularity Institute. Now you can support Singularity Institute with every purchase you make!

• $50 donation after your first purchase
• 2% of your gas and grocery purchases
• 1% of all other purchases
• Up to 10% of purchases at select merchants

Sign up now!

We’ve updated our Donate page to allow giving via Causes.com, the world’s largest online activism platform.

The site is also one of the most popular applications on Facebook, with 90 million Facebook users. When you give via Causes.com, you can show your friends who you’re giving to. I just gave $50, and I only had to click one button to announce this donation on my Facebook wall.

You can also announce a ‘Birthday Wish’, which tells your Facebook friends that what you want for your birthday is for them to give to a specific charity. Causes.com also makes it easy to tell your friends about causes you support.

We’ve already raised over $11,000 through Causes.com. Click here to join the Singularity Institute’s Causes.com group!

Causes.com is our recommended method for donating to the Singularity Institute because your donation is public, and you can help us become listed as one of the most successful charities on the site!

Starting on May 28th, the Singularity Institute ran a one-week Rationality Training Camp. Our exit survey shows that the camp was a smashing success, surpassing the expectations of the organizers and the participants.

Knowledge and skills taught and practiced include:

• Testing one’s beliefs, updating on evidence
• Designing and modifying desires
• Avoiding rationalization and overcoming biases
• Using probability theory, Fermi calculations, and microeconomics in everyday decisions
• Motivation, productivity, and efficient scholarship
• Effective communication
• Body language, social touch, and fashion
• Optimal philanthropy
• Existential risks

Participants volunteered to teach from their own fields of expertise, too, and led lessons on business, martial arts stretching, salsa dancing, and more.

Participants are positioned to have current and future impact on the world in math, artificial intelligence, philosophy, finance, optimal philanthropy, software engineering, and other fields. They continue to share the minicamp’s impact on themselves, and the impact they are having on others as a result, via an online mailing list and regular Skype video chats. There are also ongoing strategic discussions, for example concerning how best to persuade AI researchers of AI risks.

Oh, and we became friends, too.

A number of years to the future, sights of the robot do numerous duties would seem to become typical. The robot will carry out many different tasks, even for this sort of easy tasks just like cleaning the inscription on the whiteboard.

For this one kind of task, leave it to the whiteboard eraser robot developed by Fujitsu. Shown in a videotape, a robot that created by one of Japanese electronics manufacturer is looks like workmanlike cleaning the whiteboard.

Nevertheless, as reported by Ubergizmo, the lack of this robot is that its physique is not high. Of course, this will make it hard when the robot have to clean up the whiteboard hanging or lying higher than the robot.

Fujitsu team who developed this robot, says that this is only the beginning. They’ll continue to develop this robot to be able to overcome all its weak points, and also the robot can carry out their jobs correctly.

Robot whiteboard eraser is also reportedly going to be developed to control a particular vehicle, taking up the trash, and even clean up the windows.

A really special student who attended a school in Moscow, Russia. Student that are plastic-skinned robot named Stepan who diligently participate the lessons.

In different place, the true Stepan, a 12-year-old boy has brown hair and blue eyes, was sitting in front of his computer in his own home. Well, through the plastic robots, Stepan actually participate the lessons in school

Quoted by Bangkok Post on Monday (1/24/2011), Stepan Supin, thus the full name of the boy, being affected by leukemia ever since two years ago. The child’s immune system was too weak and extremely risky if he goes to school.

That is why, Stepan using plastic robot controlled from home by using a PC to participate virtually interact with teachers and friends in the class.

Equipped with a camera, microphone as well as speaker systems, the robot Stepan broadcast every thing that occurs in the classroom in real time towards the original Stepan personal computer at his place.

“The monitor is installed on the front of the robot permits Stepan to involved in attractions in class. He can ask the teacher as well as answer questions”, said one of Stepan’s teacher, Alla Gevak.

“We also call the robot by the name of Stepan. When the class started, he was performing all the tasks assigned for him, just like the other students. He was also very active”, said Alla

Stepan himself feels that he is really existing within the classroom, even though he did complete control on the movement of the robot from home. “I can change the speed of robot, moving the head left or right. I felt was in between my friends and my teacher”, stated Stepan

In the story of drama, character Romeo must be paired with Juliet. However, this Romeo was not accompanied by Juliet. Although given the name of Romeo, he’s absolutely nothing to do with the story of romance drama, but rather associated with household tasks. Who is he anyway?

Apparently, this Romeo is a robot created by Aldebaran Robotics team from France. Robot with 1.4 meters tall and weighs 40 kilograms is ready for action dealing with various household duties began in March 2011.

Reported by Pop Science on Monday (12/20/2010), Romeo would walk around the house, fetching food from the kitchen and serving food in the dining room, cleaning the house and taking out the trash. Romeo specially created to be a friend and loyal servant to the elderly and people who have physical limitations.

The team from Aldebaran Robotics claims that Romeo will be present with several innovations that are not owned by other humanoid robots. Among them is that this robot has four vertebrae, new technology of legs and arms control system which is more secure, as well as an impressive communications system.

“We want people to naturally interact with Romeo,” said Bruno Maisonnier as the founder and CEO of Aldebaran Robotics.

Romeo began to be developed in early 2009 with a fund worth 10 million euros. Half of these funds is a relief from the government.

The tragedy of the coal mining accident Pike River, in New Zealand, making 29 people trapped in the depths of the earth. Every effort was made to rescue them, including high-tech assistance, by using the robot.

Rescuers are preparing a robot from the Ministry of Defence, modified for safe enough to examine the circumstances at the location where the miners are trapped. Under the plan, the robot will be empowered when the level of harmful gases like carbon dioxide already showing signs of decline.

“We communicate with the Department of Defense and will use the robot to go into the tunnel when there is a chance,” said Gary Knowles of the local police.

New Zealand Army has confirmed they have been providing a specialist robot, complete with controller teams to help the police work. The robot is claimed quite sophisticated and capable of entering a dangerous location.

The robot will be tasked to find out the conditions and circumstances at the mine site that had collapsed. Quoted from the New Zealand Herald on Monday November 21, 2010, the robot operates with four cameras.

Nevertheless, the rescue team will not be presumptuous to rely on this robot before the gas levels in stable condition. Because there is a risk the robot will actually trigger the flame and make the situation more dangerous.

Watch this video: Robot Actress Who Could Act in the Show

Blake Lively is a humanoid robot that form a beautiful woman and has brown hair is already created since a few months ago. But only this time, this humanoid robot demonstrate his ability to perform in a play in a staging drama in Japan, along with real actors and actresses.

Quoted by the BBC, due to not been able to move gracefully while the show plays, Blake was acting with other actors and actresses while sitting in a chair. While all movements of his body, controlled by a technician who is behind the screen.

But some opponents to play Blake complained feel uncomfortable if you have to constantly perform in a play with robots. Bryerly Long, one of the actresses who act with Blake said that she often felt alone when she is on stage.

Actress Bryerly Long, working alongside the android in a Japanese play titled Sayonara, said she feels it lacks “human presence”, making her feel “alone” on stage.

“The downside is, the lack of a sense of ‘human presence’. Of course, do not be surprised if this happens, because the fact she is a robot,” she said.

Another Robot Actress Who Could Act in the Show video:

Singularity Institute Newsletter: August-October 2010 Edition
Noteworthy happenings in the world of SIAI

Singularity Summit 2010 Held in San Francisco, California

The Singularity Institute’s annual conference,  the fifth annual Singularity Summit, was held August 14-15 in San Francisco. Singularity Summit-related coverage is available from the The Independent, Singularity Hub blog, Fight Aging blog, Accelerating Future blog, and SF Weekly. Over 600 scientists, entrepreneurs, academics, and laypeople gathered at the Hyatt Regency hotel in San Francisco for an exciting two days of talks by artificial intelligence researchers, a robotics genius, brain-computer interfacing pioneers, a self-proclaimed “cyborg”, computational neuroscientists, a regenerative medicine specialist, the co-founder of evolutionary psychology, the legendary magician-skeptic James Randi, the inventor and author Ray Kurzweil, and other stimulating speakers. One attendee described the conference as “Disneyland for geeks”, another as “like TED, for a fraction of the price”.

Almost 500 photos of Singularity Summit 2010 are available at our Flickr page. Footage from the conference is still being edited and will be available in December. Subscribe to the SIAI blog to be the first to know when videos are released, and for announcements about next year’s Singularity Summit. You can also visit the Singularity Summit Facebook page to see who else likes the event.

Singularity Institute Researchers Give Five Presentations at the European Conference on Computing and Philosophy in Munich

In early October, the 2010 European Computing and Philosophy (ECAP) conference was held at the Technical University of Munchen, including the 2nd year of the Singularity track. The Singularity Institute again provided financial sponsorship of attendance costs to enable several high-quality presentations, anchoring the track.

SIAI provided financial support enabling five of the peer-reviewed presentations. These papers were coauthored by SIAI research staff Anna Salamon and Steve Rayhawk, by past SIAI Visiting Fellows Steven Kaas, Janos Kramar, Carl Shulman, and Kaj Sotala, by long-time SIAI supporter and volunteer Joshua Fox, and by external academic coauthors Peter Salamon (professor of mathematics, SDSU) and Anders Sandberg (Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford University).

Amnon Eden, the track organizer and a professor of computer science at the University of Essex, also announced that after 2009’s successful event he had been contacted by academic publisher Springer to produce an edited volume on the technological singularity hypothesis. The website for the book, The Singularity Hypothesis: A Scientific And Philosophical Assessment, is already online, and will “invite contributions that offer a critical analysis of this hypothesis, assess its empirical and philosophical content, examine relevant evidence, and explore its implications.” Plans to develop some of the conference presentations into book chapter submissions were already forming as the conference drew to a close.

Video of Joshua Fox and Carl Shulman’s presentation can be found on the SIAI website, and a full writeup of the Singularity track at the conference is at Anders Sandberg’s blog. Here is a list of SIAI-supported presentations at ECAP:

“How intelligible is intelligence? Implications for AI development trajectories”
Anna Salamon, Steve Rayhawk, Janos Kramar

“Super-intelligence does not imply benevolence”
Joshua Fox, Carl Shulman

“From mostly harmless to civilization-threatening: pathways to superintelligence”
Kaj Sotala

“Economic Implications of Software Minds”
Steven Kaas, Peter Salamon, Anna Salamon, Steve Rayhawk

“Implications of a Software-limited Singularity”
Carl Shulman, Anders Sandberg

Singularity Summit AU 2010 Held in Melbourne, Australia

The Singularity Summit AU 2010 was held in Melbourne on September 7, 11, and 12th. This was the first Singularity Summit event outside of the United States, and was attended by about 120 people. The conference opened up Tuesday night with a presentation by artist Stelarc, a panel, and a presentation by biotech entrepreneur and best-selling author Gregory Benford. Over the weekend, the conference continued with over a dozen presentations and six panels, with excellent questions from the audience during extensive Q&A sessions. Abstracts for the talks can be accessed on the Singularity Summit AU website. A big congratulations goes to Adam Ford, who organized the Summit, and to everyone who attended and volunteered to make the event happen.  HIVE45, a Singularity-focused podcast and video show, covered the event. Presentations from the Summit will be made available online over the next couple months. You can also visit the Singularity Summit AU on Facebook.

New Research Fellow: Peter de Blanc

The Singularity Institute welcomes our fourth Research Fellow, Peter de Blanc, a long-time volunteer for SIAI and participant in our Visiting Fellows Program. Peter de Blanc is an AI researcher who studies machine learning and goal systems. He is responsible for keeping SIAI up to date on published AI research. He has written three papers on goal systems for decision-theoretic agents, including “Convergence of Expected Utility for Universal AI”, “Convergence of Expected Utilities for Probability Distributions”, and “Ontological Crises in Artificial Agents’ Value Systems”. He has also written about statistics, graph theory, and elections on his blog “Space and Games”. He holds an MA in mathematics from Temple University. You can follow de Blanc on Twitter at @spaceandgames.

Visiting Fellows Program Update

Over the year the SIAI Visiting Fellows Program has continued to run strong. In August and September, seven new Fellows arived: Ben Hoskin, Ron McCoy, Thomas Colthurst, Will Sawin, Paul Rhodes, Keefe Roedersheimer and Zachary Vance.

The Fellows have done a broad range of work, from assisting with the Singularity Summit and outreach to improving the Less Wrong codebase and conducting independent research. Topics investigated include decision theory, the application of Goodheart’s law to AI concept learning, backdoor routes to a positive singularity, and Ethics as Evolutionarily Stable Strategies in a Social Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Following is bio information on the new Fellows. For information on all the Fellows, check out the Visiting Fellows page at the SIAI website.

Keefe Roedersheimer is a software engineer working on a distributed knowledge base scheduled for release this fall. At SIAI, he is working on improvements to the Less Wrong codebase (e.g. new searches, karma system updates, SEO optimization) and studying the relationship between growth in computing power and the hardware requirements of whole brain emulation. He holds an MSc in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Notre Dame for work on optimizing treatment planning algorithms for radiosurgery and received security clearance to work on the Mission Operations Reconfiguration Systems project at Ames Research Center in 2008.

Thomas Colthurst holds an Sc. B. from Brown University and a Ph. D. from MIT, both in
mathematics. Thomas has published extensively in the field of large vocabulary, conversational speech recognition; he is also the designer of the board game “Barons”, which will be released in late 2010 by Cambridge Game Factory. Thomas currently works as a
software engineer at Google. While at the Singularity Institute in August, he worked with Anna Salamon and Ben Hoskin on a paper about the difficulties of learning human concepts from their statistical correlations.

Ben Hoskin is a Mathematics and Philosophy student at the University of Oxford. He holds the Robson Scholarship and was several times a gold certificate winner in the UKMT Challenge. While at the Singularity Institute, he worked with Anna Salamon and Thomas Colthurst on a paper about the difficulties of learning human concepts from their statistical correlations and with Steve Rayhawk on using game theory to formalize some of the psychology that shows up in metaethics.

Paul Rhodes is an economics student at George Mason University. He has a background in philosophy and studied political science at the University of Oxford. Rhodes played a close role in helping out with preparation for the Singularity Summit 2010 in San Francisco.

Future of the Visiting Fellows Program

With both the summer and the summit behind us, things have calmed down a bit in the Fellows Program. Jasen Murray (Program Manager) plans to keep the population small for the fall to focus on improving and restructuring the program and moving the Fellows house to Berkeley. In addition to the standard fare of collaborating with SIAI on papers, popular writing, and programming projects, future iterations of the fellows program will include a structured course on instrumental rationality — the art of using reason to “win at life.” Our plan is to develop a powerful set of tools that people can use to systematically acquire a deep understanding of how the world works and to provide an environment in which they are encouraged to continually practice using them. If all goes as planned, we will be doing a two to four week trial run this winter. Watch for updates and the call for participants.

Conference on December 4-5th: Humanity+ @ Caltech

SIAI supporters may be interested in an upcoming conference, Humanity+ @
Caltech: Redefining Humanity in the Era of Radical Technological Change. Humanity+@ Caltech,
which will take place on December 4-5 (Saturday/Sunday), at the Beckman Institute at Caltech in Los Angeles, California. Speakers will include many of the top visionaries and leaders of the transhumanist community, as well as new voices from the worlds of science, art, media and business.

The Humanity+ @ Caltech program will be divided into four main sessions, each one of which will cover a key area of transhumanist thought:

* Re-Imagining Humans: Mind, Media and Methods (Saturday morning)
* Radically Increasing the Human Healthspan (Saturday afternoon)
* Redefining Intelligence: Artificial Intelligence, Intelligence Enhancement and Substrate-Independent Minds (Sunday morning)
* Business and Economy in the Era of Radical Technomorphosis (Sunday afternoon)

Tickets for the conference will be $299 per person ($179 for students). If you register before November 1st, you will be eligible for a discounted, Early Registration price of $249 ($149 for students), so register today! There will also be a special banquet for conference attendees after the end of the first day, on Saturday evening. Tickets for the banquet are $39; space is limited, so register soon to ensure your seat. (Breakfast and lunch are included free for both days.)

Humanity+ conferences are open to everyone, but there is a discount for members. If you are a full member of Humanity+, you can get a 10% discount on conference registration, as well as discounts on future conferences. Humanity+ is also launching a new membership program, Plus membership, for transhumanist enthusiasts. Plus members will get a 50% discount on Humanity+ @ Caltech registration, and free or heavily discounted tickets to future conferences. We also expect to announce additional benefits for Plus members over the next year.

Humanity+ @ CalTech is hosted by the California Institute of Technology and ab|inventio, the invention factory behind QLess, Whozat, SocialDiligence and MyNew.TV. Sponsorship is also provided by TechZulu and Vokle.

Michael Anissimov and Robin Hanson to Present at Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting in December, Catastrophic Risks Workshop Supported by SIAI

Singularity Institute Media Director and Singularity Summit co-organizer Michael Anissimov will present on “Public Scholarship For Global Catastrophic Risks” at SRA 2010 in Salt Lake City on December 5-8. The meeting is open to anyone interested in risk analysis. Registration is $500. Friends of SIAI Robin Hanson and Seth Baum will also present at the conference, and Baum will be chairing a workshop enabled by SIAI donors. Anissimov’s presentation will be part of the Assessment, Communication and Perception of Nanotechnology track. A full session list is available. Seth Baum will be chairing the Methodologies for Global Catastrophic Risk Assessment track, where Robin Hanson will be giving his talk. Here are Anissimov and Hanson’s abstracts:

T3-F.4 14:30 Public Scholarship For Global Catastrophic Risks. Anissimov M*; Singularity Institute

Abstract: Global catastrophic risks (GCRs) are risks that threaten civilization on a global scale, including nuclear war, ecological collapse, pandemics, and poorly understood risks from emerging technologies such as nanotechnology and artificial intelligence. Public perception of GCRs is important because these risks and responses to them are often driven by public activities or by the public policies of democracies. However, much of the public perception is based on science fiction books and films, which unfortunately often lack scientific accuracy. This presentation describes an effort to improve public perceptions of GCR through public scholarship. Public scholarship is the process of bringing academic and other scholarship into the public sphere, often to inform democratic processes. The effort described here works on all GCRs and focuses on emerging technologies such as biotechnology and nanotechnology. The effort involves innovating use of blogs, social networking sites, and other new media platforms. This effort has already resulted in, among other things, a visible online community of thousands following the science around GCRs, and plans to further move discussion of scholarly GCR literature into the mainstream media. It is believed that public scholarship efforts like these can play important roles in societal responses to GCRs.

W3-A.3 14:10 Catastrophic Risk Forecasts From Refuge Entry Futures. Hanson RD*; George Mason University

Abstract: Speculative markets have demonstrated powerful abilities to forecast future events, which has inspired a new field of prediction markets to explore such possibilities. Can such power be harnessed to forecast global catastrophic risk? One problem is that such mechanisms offered weaker incentives to forecast distant future events, yet we want forecasts about distant future catastrophes. But this is a generic problem with all ways to forecast the distant future; it is not specific to this mechanism. Bets also have a problem forecasting the end of the world, as no one is left afterward to collect on bets. So to let speculators advise us about world’s end, we might have them trade an asset available now that remains valuable as close as possible to an end. Imagine a refuge with a good chance of surviving a wide range of disasters. It might be hidden deep in a mine, stocked with years of food and power, and continuously populated with thirty experts and thirty amateurs. Locked down against pandemics, it is opened every month for supplies and new residents. A refuge ticket gives you the right to use an amateur refuge slot for a given time period. To exercise a ticket, you show up at its entrance at the assigned time. Refuge tickets could be auctioned years in advance, broken into conditional parts, and traded in subsidized markets. For example, one might buy a refuge ticket valid on a certain date only in the event that USA and Russia had just broken off diplomatic relations, or in the event a city somewhere is nuked. The price of such resort tickets would rise with the chance of such events. By trading such tickets conditional on a policy that might mitigate a crisis, such as a treaty, prices could reflect conditional chances of such events.

Support the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

The Singularity Institute needs your dedicated support to continue our research and educational work. In the last decade since our founding, the Singularity Institute has expanded from just a few people to a stable organization with almost a dozen staff and hundreds of supporters worldwide. We currently support four Research Fellows and five other full and part-time staff to participate in and organize the Singularity Summit, Visiting Fellows Program, outreach programs, and independent research. Singularity Institute supporters and collaborators can be found from England to Japan, Finland to Australia. Join our worldwide network in pursuit of a positive Singularity by contributing your time or money to our effort. Please get in touch with us if you have any questions or want to help.

Thank you for reading!

image: gizmag.com

As a superhero, Iron Man relies on his armor is very strong and sophisticated. Now, a robot suit like Iron Man was trying to be created by a United States military contractor. Of course a robot suit called XOS 2 is not as advanced owned by Iron Man. But at least, his ability could be said to double the strength of qualified people who wear it.

Made by Raytheon Sarcos company, XOS 2 is a new generation of robot suit. Compared to the previous version (XOS 1), XOS 2 claimed lighter, faster and stronger.

“We were able to increase the capabilities of XOS 2 and significantly reduced power consumption,” said Fraser N. Smith, Vice President of Operations at the Raytheon Sarcos.

With XOS 2, a soldier could be capable of carrying over 100 pounds again and again without getting tired. With this robot suit, a soldier can hit a hard object, such as wood, without pain.

Although it looks heavy, XOS 2 users claimed to still be able to move swiftly. For example, they can kick a ball or climb without difficulty. Quoted from MSNBC on Tuesday (09/28/2010), XOS 2 was developed for military purposes. In the next five years, the U.S. army has been projected using this futuristic tool.

Watch Raytheon XOS 2 video:

Are you tired of dieting alone? No need to worry, because soon there is a robot that can help your diet program. A named Autom Oboth can find out how much exercise and diet undertaken by an individual. Even with the touch of his hand on his screen, Autom can know a person’s mood.

Cory Kidd is as owner and chief executive of Intuitive Automata Inc.. Autom which began when the school creates in the Technology Media Lab Massachusetts Institute, United States (U.S.). Kidd also often visit patients at Boston Medical Center Clinic, USA. This is where he got the inspiration to create something that could be useful for many people.

Dieters who want to use Autom can enter details of diet and exercise patterns on the screen. Autom also be programmed to perform some conversations, like “I know talk to me maybe a little weird, but I hope you’ll get used to this,” said Autom. He could write the words “Thank You”, “OK” or “Let go” on the screen that responds to menu choices.

Quoted from Wall Street Journal, Friday (23/07/2010), this robot can blink and see who is talking to him and then end the conversation with the phrase, “I hope we can talk again about your progress,” he said with a tone of women Autom.

Kidd explained that this diet maid robot priced at U.S. $ 500 plus an additional monthly subscription fee that includes software updates.

Intuitive Automata company based in Hong Kong was selected as a finalist in the Asian Innovation Awards, with a target market of the United States to begin to operate the robot in front of her diet. The plan, robots will be tested in a pilot program in one of the leading insurance company in the country. -detikinet-

Good news for wheelchair users. The robotic legs successfully developed to help users to get up and walk again with both feet. Even able to go up and down the stairs.

Robot leg from New Zealand was named Rex. The robot, will be attached to the side legs to support the user’s body. From her appearance, “robot legs” is similar to the legs of Robocop.

“I’ll never forget what it was like to see my feet walking under me the first time I used Rex,” says Hayden, who is 6’4” (193cm) tall when standing. “People say to me, ‘look up when you’re walking’ but I just can’t stop staring down at my feet moving.”

Being out of his chair and on his feet again allows Hayden many more options on a day to day basis, increasing opportunities for employment and recreational activities by providing access for him to independently go places previously inaccessible to him. For example – up stairs!

Rex users self-transfer from their wheelchair into Rex, strap themselves in and control their movements using a joystick and control pad.

Robot with a weight 84 pounds (about 38 kilograms) was developed by Rex Bionics company based in Auckland. Rex is the brainchild of two childhood friends, Richard Little and Robert Irving – co-founders of Rex Bionics. “Both of our mothers are in wheelchairs so we are aware of some of the obstacles and access issues faced by many wheelchair users,” says Richard.

Robert’s Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis seven years ago was the catalyst for these men to put their engineering skills to use to develop a practical, standing and walking alternative to wheelchairs.

The founders are quick to point out that Rex is not a replacement for a wheelchair, but a complement that offers a range of options not currently available anywhere else in the world. It is potentially suitable for manual wheelchair users who can self-transfer and operate hand controls.

Robot with two hours of endurance of this batteries have several limitations for those who would use it. The user must have height of about 4-6 feet (about 120-180 centimeters), weight less than 220 pounds (less than 100 kilograms) and have a waist circumference of less than 14.9 inches (37.85 centimeters)

Rex is expected to cost approximately US$150,000. The decision to purchase Rex will be a very individual assessment of what Rex allows customers to do. The benefits can be social, for the work place, for home and health related.

Rex will soon be available for purchase in New Zealand, where the price will be a bit lower since it will be easier to supply and support close to the company’s home base on Auckland’s North Shore.

Along with the shrinking population and population growth rates in Japan, the Japanese government to allocate funds even big enough to create a robot child. Noby and Kindy is a two robotic boy who accidentally created for medical reasons.

The research team led by professor Minoru Asada of Osaka University had succeeded in creating robotic children. The robot which deliberately created to study the cognitive development of children, is equipped with artificial intelligence and can be used as research material to view a child’s growth and interaction.

Quoted from Cnet, on Friday (18/06/2010), although its size is said to look like the evil doll Chucky movie character, but both robots are actually funny. Noby behavior which weighs 17 kilograms adjusted like a nine-month-old baby. While the other boy robot named Kindy with weights 60 kilograms, programmed behavior, such as children aged five years.

Noby equipped with 600 sensors placed all over his body while Kindy has 42 motors and more than 100 sensors on its body. Both can recognize speech, facial expressions of people and can crawl or even hold hands with someone. Noby and Kindy also has a synthetic leather, two-ear microphone and two cameras in their eyes to understand the situation around.

Child population in Japan is not much because of the shrinking of the population growth there. The presence of Noby and Kindy expected to be entertainers and treat the nostalgia of the Japanese people against the children.

source: detikinet

Robotics technology – robotics news and tutorial

Japanese electronics company, Hitachi, creating a roller skating robot capable of walking on uneven surfaces. In addition, this robot is also capable of carrying out orders and can work as tourist guides or security guards. Wow, great!

Humanoid robot named EMIEW2 has a complex spring shock absorbers in the legs. Tool that enables the robot to move across the small mound in the floor without tripping over wires.

“This robot can control the position like a man when it stabilizes itself after a jump in line skates,” said Yuji Hosoda, chief researcher at Hitachi’s department of transportation systems.

With a height of 80 cm and weight 14 kg, this robot has 14 pieces of helmet-mounted microphone and can hear a human voice even though the atmosphere around being noisy.

Equipped with wheels on both legs, this robot is also capable of sliding with a maximum speed of six kilometers per hour, equivalent to an adult walking speed.

“Robots that have a red and white colors can be used as receptionists and guides for visitors,” Hosoda said. “In addition, it can be used for such security patrols and find a hiding person, at the point of death from CCTV. EMIEW Robot is a new form of security oversight,” he added.

Quoted from AFP on Monday (6/21/2010), Hitachi itself has not announced when it will sell its products. Despite sounding like a bird from Australia – Emu – EMIEW name apparently stands for Excellent Mobility and Interactive Existence.

source: detikinet