In the latest edition of TIME, the venerable publication features “10 Questions for Ray Kurzweil,” in which they ask him about how technology will change the way we live, including the role of artificial intelligence, food production, longevity, and even whether we’ll discover extraterrestrial intelligence. A sample: You predict we’ll reach a point with artificial [...]
Posts under ‘Singularity’
Transhumanist Week in Review: October 17, 2010
Here are a few items I wanted to cover here this week, but didn’t get around to because of work, travel or other priorities. If you’re interested in helping out on this blog, feel free to drop me a line. Why the Singularity isn’t going to happen (10/16/10) – “That is how Singularity-level technologies work [...]
Michio Kaku on how to prevent hostile AI
Over at Big Think, physicist Michio Kaku appears in a video where he talks about the progression of Moore’s Law, the evolution of AI, and how to prevent robots from doing us harm: Right now our machines are as smart as insects. Eventually they’ll be smart as mice. After that they’ll be smart as dogs [...]
Astronomy: The first “post-singularity” science?
Computers are playing an increasingly active role in astronomy. Human astronomers are able to devote more of their time to analyzing and interpreting data gathered by machines, thus automating much of the process. However, we may be close to a time where the number of discoveries made by computers far outweighs the ability of astronomers [...]
Entrepreneur Magazine talks Singularity University
The October issue of Entrepreneur includes a feature on Singularity University, and how participants may be able to take what they learn throughout the program to create new business plans and models that will benefit populations in areas often ignored or marginalized. “We want students to think big, but do so realistically,” (Founder Peter) Diamandis [...]
Who’s in the mood for existential threats?
Discover Magazine has a list of “30 Ways the World Could End,” which details exactly what it claims. To be fair, though, some of these aren’t exactly world-ending threats, but rather would spell the end of humanity as we know it. For instance, see this description of the technological singularity: 30 INFORMATION OVERLOAD Futurist Ray [...]
To the mainstream, transhumanism is still really weird
Sometimes I’m reminded that many of the concepts transhumanists regularly discuss and work toward – cryonics, mind uploading, molecular nanotechnology, life extension and so on – are still extremely foreign and odd to most humans. Try telling your friends you hope to live forever through advanced technologies and see how they react. Then talk to [...]
R.U. Sirius offers his utopian vision for a transhuman future
One of my favorite blogs, io9, has been running a series of posts on “posthumanity” from both fiction and real-life. Today R.U. Sirius of h+ Magazine has a great post up about his “best-case scenario for posthumanity.” In it, he describes what his ideal vision of the future might look like, which includes open-source style [...]
Top 5 TED talks on transhumanism
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) brings together some of the world’s top thinkers at conferences around the world to deliver short presentations on “ideas worth spreading.” Not surprisingly, several speakers have delivered talks on topics of interest to transhumanists, such as life extension, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, and more. One of the great things about TED is [...]
Rutgers to offer course on “Singularity Studies”
This summer, Rutgers University-Camden is offering what sounds like an incredible course in “Singularity Studies,” described as “The Future of Humanity in the Age of Superhuman Artificial Intelligence.” The instructors are Ben Goertzel, Ph.D, known for his leadership positions at many transhumanist organizations (including the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Humanity+) and Ted Goertzel, [...]