From: Thomas McCabe (pphysics141@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Jun 01 2010 - 23:46:59 MDT
Singularity Summit 2010 returns to San Francisco, explores
intelligence augmentation
Speakers include Futurist Ray Kurzweil, Magician-Skeptic James Randi
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 August 14-15, hundreds of AI researchers, robotics experts,
philosophers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and interested laypeople will
converge in San Francisco to address the Singularity and related
issues at the only conference on the topic, the Singularity Summit.
Experts in fields including animal intelligence, artificial
intelligence, brain-computer interfacing, tissue regeneration, medical
ethics, computational neurobiology, augmented reality, and more will
share their latest research and explore its implications for the
future of humanity.
“This year, the conference shifts to a focus on neuroscience,
bioscience, cognitive enhancement, and other explorations of what
Vernor Vinge called ‘intelligence amplification’ — the other route to
the Singularity,” said Michael Vassar, president of the Singularity
Institute, which is hosting the event.
Irene Pepperberg, author of “Alex & Me,” who has pushed the frontier
of animal intelligence with her research on African Gray Parrots, will
explore the ethical and practical implications of non-human
intelligence enhancement and of the creation of new intelligent life
less powerful than ourselves. Futurist-inventor Ray Kurzweil will
discuss reverse-engineering the brain and his forthcoming book, How
the Mind Works and How to Build One. Allan Synder, Director, Centre
for the Mind at the University of Sydney, will explore the use of
transcranial magnetic stimulation for the enhancement of narrow
cognitive abilities. Joe Tsien will talk about the smarter rats and
mice that he created by tuning the molecular substrate of the brain’s
learning mechanism. Steve Mann, “the world’s first cyborg,” will
demonstrate his latest geek-chic inventions: wearable computers now
used by almost 100,000 people.
Other speakers will include magician-skeptic and MacArthur Genius
Award winner James Randi; Gregory Stock (Redesigning Humans), former
Director of the Program on Medicine, Technology, and Society at UCLA’s
School of Public Health; Terry Sejnowski, Professor and Laboratory
Head, Salk Institute Computational Neurobiology Laboratory, who
believes we are just ten years away from being able to upload
ourselves; Ellen Heber-Katz, Professor, Molecular and Cellular
Oncogenesis Program at The Wistar Institute, who is investigating the
molecular basis of wound regeneration in mutant mice, which can
regenerate limbs, hearts, and spinal cords; Anita Goel, MD, physicist,
and CEO of nanotechnology company Nanobiosym; and David Hanson,
Founder & CEO, Hanson Robotics, who is creating the world’s most
realistic humanoid robots.
Interested readers can watch videos from past summits and register at
www.singularitysummit.com.
(From http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/)
-- - Tom McCabe http://www.rationalfuturist.com/ Department of Mathematics Yale University http://www.math.yale.edu/
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