The Singularity (Summit) is Here

The thing with the singularity is that everyone was really stressed out about it, scared of it or unconvinced of it for a long time. Until it got here. Now people seem more or less contented by the fact that technology is an extension of who they are. And by contented I mean thrilled. Where would we be without our smartphones, tablets, wi-fi and GPS? All together screwed is where we’d be. I’ll tell you where we wouldn’t be: The Singularity Summit, the annual conference that brings together supporters, denouncers and skeptics of the movement for two days.

This year it’s going down in New York at the 92nd Street Y. It’s a who’s who of the future: Ray Kurzweil, Stephen Wolfram, IBM Watson creator David Ferrucci, longevity expert Sonia Arrison, author David Brin, neuroscientist Christof Koch, PayPal founder Peter Thiel, MIT cosmologist Max Tegmark, AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky, MIT polymath Alexander Wissner-Gross, DARPA challenge winner Riley Crane, Skype founder Jaan Tallinn, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings, economist Tyler Cowen. A bit of history:

The first Singularity Summit was held at Stanford in 2006 to further understanding and discussion about the Singularity concept and the future of human technological progress. It was founded as a venue for leading thinkers to explore the subject, whether scientist, enthusiast, or skeptic. The goal of the Summit is to improve people's thinking about the future and increasing public awareness of radical technologies under development today and of the transformative implications of such technologies understood as part of a larger process.

Watch the trailer above, featuring “techno-optimist transhumanist wunderkind,” Jason Silva, to get an idea of what you’re in store for if you’re attending. Media theorist and documentarian for the PBS series Frontline, Douglas Rushkoff has called him the the “Ashton Kutcher of the singularity.” Silva is in the business of having epiphanies, as he’ll demonstrate on Saturday, when he gives the post-lunch keynote. Hold on to your brains.

As for the singularity in general, I’m not convinced it’s a comforting thought, but I’ll be at the summit this weekend, trying to figure out if I should start running for the hills or running towards an Apple Store. I’m also excited to see an embarrassment of iPads, which will be used to live Tweet, Facebook, check-in, turn-on, tune-in, drop-out, et al.

Here’s the program:

- Day 1

7:00 AM – 7:45 AM Registration and Catered Breakfast
7:50 AM – 8:00 AM Nathan Labenz: Welcome
8:00 AM – 9:00 AM Ray Kurzweil: “From Eliza to Watson to Passing the Turing Test”
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM Stephen Badylak: “Regenerative Medicine: Possibilities and Potential”
9:30 AM – 10:15 AM Sonia Arrison: “100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith”
10:15 AM – 10:30 AM Coffee Break
10:45 AM – 11:30 AM Peter Thiel: “Back to the Future”
11:30 AM – 12:15 PM Dmitry Itskov: "Project "Immortality 2045" – Russian Experience"
12:15 PM – 12:45 PM Michael Shermer: “Social Singularity: Transitioning from Civilization 1.0 to 2.0”
12:45 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch
2:15 PM – 2:45 PM Jason Silva: “The Undivided Mind” — Science and Imagination"
2:45 PM – 3:30 PM Stephen Wolfram: “Computation and the Future of Mankind”
3:30 PM – 4:00 PM James McLurkin: “The Future of Robotics is Swarms: Why a Thousand Robots are Better than One”
4:00 PM – 4:45 PM Christof Koch: “The Neurobiology and Mathematics of Consciousness”
4:45 PM – 5:15 PM Coffee Break
5:15 PM – 5:45 PM Eliezer Yudkowsky: "Open Problems in Friendly Artificial Intelligence"
5:45 PM – 7:00 PM Max Tegmark: “The Future of Life: a Cosmic Perspective”
7:00 PM Closing

Day 2

7:00 AM – 8:00 AM Catered Breakfast
8:00 AM – 8:30 AM Alexander Wissner-Gross: “Planetary-Scale Intelligence”
8:30 AM – 9:00 AM Sharon Bertsch McGrayne: “A History of Bayes’ Theorem”
9:00 AM – 9:30 AM David Brin: “So you want to make gods. Now why would that bother anybody?”
9:30 AM – 10:00 AM Coffee Break
10:00 AM – 10:45 AM Tyler Cowen: “The Great Stagnation”
10:45 AM – 11:15 AM Tyler Cowen and Michael Vassar Debate The Great Stagnation
11:15 AM – 11:45 PM John Mauldin: “The Endgame Meets The Millennium Wave — Why the Economic Crisis will be History as We Create the Future”
11:45 AM – 12:30 PM Riley Crane: “Rethinking Communication”
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM Lunch
2:00 PM – 2:30 PM Dileep George & Scott Brown: “From Planes to Brains: Building AI the Wright Way”
2:30 PM – 3:00 PM Jaan Tallinn: “Balancing the Trichotomy: Individual vs. Society vs. Universe”
3:00 PM – 3:30 PM David Ferrucci: “Watson AI Perceptions”
3:30 PM – 4:00 PM Dan Cerutti: “Commercializing Watson”
4:00 PM – 5:00 PM Ken Jennings: "The Human Brain in Jeopardy: Computers That “Think”
5:00 PM Closing

• Q+A With The Director of Transcendent Man, a Documentary on the Singularity
• Subhuman In The Singularity
• Transhumanist Jason Silva Wants You To Be Happy, Forever
• Can Transhumanism Eliminate Suffering?
• Jason Silva on Creating and Sharing Awe