NASA & Google Join Forces to Research Singularity

[Whitney]

NASA & Google (so it couldn't sound smarter if Brainiac 5 traveled back in time to attend the opening ceremony).  The "Singularity" is the idea of a future point where super-human intellects are created, turbo-boosting the already exponential rate of technological improvement and triggering a fundamental change in human society - after the Agricultural Revolution, and the Industrial Revolution, we would have the Intelligence Revolution

Real AI effects are closer than you might think, with entirely automated systems producing new scientific results and even holding patents on minor inventions.  The key factor in singularity scenarios is the positive-feedback loop of self-improvement: once something is even slightly smarter than humanity, it can start to improve itself or design new intelligences faster than we can leading to an intelligence explosion designed by something that isn't us.

The Singularity University proposes to train people to deal with the accelerating evolution of technology, both in terms of understanding the directions and harnessing the potential of new interactions between branches of science like artificial intelligence, genetic engineering and nanotechnology.

Inventor and author Raymond Kurzweil is one of the forces behind SU, which we presume will have the most awesomely equipped pranks of all time ("Check it out, we replaced the Professor's chair with an adaptive holographic robot!"), and it isn't the only institutions he's helped found.  There's also the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence whose sole function is based on the exponential AI increases predicted.  The idea is that the first AI created will have an enormous advantage over all that follow, upgrading itself at a rate they can never catch up on simply because it started first, so the Institute wants to work to create a benevolent AI to guard us against all that might follow.

Make no mistake: the AI race is on, and Raymond wants us to win.

Video link:  http://www.ted.com/talks/ray_kurzweil_a ... hingfo.com

Source link:  http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/20 ... llect.html

[curiosityandthecat]

And this is why I've been reading Ray Kurzweil for years. http://bit.ly/bU8De If anybody was going to get this ball rolling, it's him.

 

[karadan]

Astonishing! Nothing interests me more than this subject. Yay for the future!  

[PipeBox]

Not exactly sure what this Singularity University is trying to accomplish.  You'll forgive me for being the cynic, but it sounds like they're aiming to cash in on the hype without actually bringing anything to the table.  After all, what could better adapt us to a post-singularity world than methods developed post-singularity?  Training people to deal with the singularity, they say?  On what scale?  Surely it isn't meaningful, and it's doubtful this training will accomplish much (indeed, is it even needed?), but I don't know their methods nor anything of them except what the article offers.  Investing in serious AI research is more what I'd like to hear, though it's not as though just money will make smarter programmers and electrical engineers, but at least with a stable income all parties involved can continue trying to advance us.

[Heretical Rants]

This reminds me of Google Docs
http://www.google.com/mobile/m/brainsea ... winmo.html  <-Google Brain

*Hey Whitney, why did you make lol.