A recap of the 2009 Singularity Summit convention in New York City, authored and presented by Sandy Santra at the New York Semantic Web Meetup on December 10, 2009

1. Recap of the
Singularity Summit 2009
Summit presented by
The Singularity Institute for
Artificial Intelligence
Recap given by Sandy Santra at the
Iotico: New York City Semantic Web Meetup,
December 10, 2009
©2009 Sandy Santra

2. Introduction
• Hi, my name is Sandy Santra. Marco Neumann invited me here tonight to give a short talk on the
Singularity Summit conference held in New York City back in October 2010.
• My general background is 30 years in IT and programming. I’m a Help Desk Analyst at an award-
winning IT department that supports an international law firm based in New York City. We’ve been
rated #1 nationwide for two years in a row, and #1 in New York City for five years in a row.
• The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is probably the best-known organization in the world
devoted to the Singularity movement, and that’s what made me want to attend their yearly conference.
• Gary Wolf, a contributing editor to “Wired” who spoke at the Summit, emphasized that one way to
communicate better with machines is to learn how to speak a machine language so that machines can
speak back to us.
• In that respect, the many currents of the Singularity movement are similar to the work being done with
the Semantic Web. The bottom line is building languages, architectures, and interfaces that allow man
and machine to directly interface with each other.
2 ©2009 Sandy Santra

3. The Summit—Numbers
• The Singularity Institute is • ticket price: $500
based in Palo Alto, CA, and
this was the fourth Summit • cost of Summit to SI: $120K
they presented, their biggest
so far. • revenue produced: $180K
• It took place on the weekend • 30 CEOs in attendance
of October 3-4 at the 92nd
Street Y.
• and it’s been estimated that
the combined net worth of
everyone in attendance was
• 833 attendees; 30 speakers $3 billion
3 ©2009 Sandy Santra

4. The Singularity—4 Definitions
• The Singularity Institute defines the Singularity as the “technological creation
of smarter-than-human intelligence”
• Ray Kurzweil, who still sits on their Board of Directors, defines it as a “rate of
technological growth so extreme that technology appears to be growing at
infinite speed”
• Robin Hanson, a speaker at the Summit, describes it as “an unexpected, sharp
increase in the exponent of economic growth, similar to the agricultural and
industrial revolutions of the past, potentially replacing virtually all human labor”
• And Wikipedia comprises the “technological singularity” as: “self-improving
artificial intelligence, superintelligence, breakdowns in the predictability of the
future, and rapidly accelerating change”
4 ©2009 Sandy Santra

5. A Wide Playing Field
• Listening to nearly 20 hours of lectures by top scientists
presenting hundreds of abstract technical concepts is a little
daunting
• Not to mention the very wide playing field in terms of what the
Singularity actually comprises
• So please forgive me, as I’m now going to present an
extremely reductionistic taxonomy in order to give you some
idea of this developing field in about five minutes
5 ©2009 Sandy Santra

6. Five Scientific Camps
For the purpose of simplification, let’s look at five different scientific camps:
• First, the Analysts,
• Second, the Architects,
• Third, the Artificial Intelligence scientists and researchers,
• Fourth, the Biotech scientists,
• Fifth, the Neuroscientists
6 ©2009 Sandy Santra

7. The Analysts
• The Analysts are experts in many different disciplines. They use their huge
pool of knowledge to expose limitations of the human brain, delve into the
nature of consciousness, look closely at the intersection of human evolution
and the machines we create, and generally survey the overlapping and
oftentimes conflicting trends of the Singularity movement.
• Some of the bigger names who presented at the Summit: Ray Kurzweil, Robin
Hanson, Gary Marcus, Peter Thiel, Jürgen Schmidhuber.
• Their general premise: The big picture is much more important than any
specific agenda.
• Their modus operandi, then, goes like this: Something really big is coming!
BUT DON’T WORRY, WE WILL GUIDE YOU!
7 ©2009 Sandy Santra

8. The Architects 1
• The Architects are quite savvy about how to merge disparate technologies and
leverage unusual resources; they’re extremely creative at advancing the Singularity
movement with truly “outside-the-box” approaches. Here are a few examples of
these “blueprints”:
• Brad Templeton, Chairman of the Board of the EFF, gave a presentation on how
to build a cheap robocar that doesn’t require new roads, parks itself, and gets
better mileage than even some mass transit;
• Gary Wolf demonstrated how crowdsourcing can leverage social networking, the
Web, and the iPhone to build data aggregation that beats companies at their
own data mining.
8 ©2009 Sandy Santra

9. The Architects 2
• James Jorasch, a panel moderator, proposed that we pool all existing
scientific resources toward developing higher-level AI, thereafter letting this
advanced AI do all our science & research.
• And as some of you remember from a recent Semantic Web meetup, IBM is
working on building a network of GPS and sensing devices to create an
“Internet of things” so that the entire physicality of our planet would become
“sentient” on the Web.
• The Architects’ general premise: It’s all about the data—how to structure it, how
to connect it, and how to use it.
• Their very positive and practical M.O.: WE WILL BUILD IT!
9 ©2009 Sandy Santra

10. Artificial Intelligence 1
• The AI scientists predict an “intelligence explosion” in the coming
years, including the arrival of a machine more intelligent than us that
could easily build more intelligent machines than itself.
• Stephen Wolfram, Marcus Hutter, Ben Goertzel, Itamar Arel, and many
others are proponents of the development of “Artificial General
Intelligence,” an AI strong enough to perform “general intelligent
action” that matches or exceeds human intelligence.
• They’re using mice, computer models, and virtual worlds to run their
tests, leveraging cognitive synergy to associate different types of
memory with different algorithms, as well as building in the ability to
resolve linguistic ambiguity.
10 ©2009 Sandy Santra

11. Artificial Intelligence 2
• Ben Goertzel posits that we can create “software that can achieve
complex goals in complex environments, including goals that were not
conceived at the time of system creation.”
• Itamar Arel and others are working from the ground up to understand
the structure of the mind, decision-making processes, the tradeoff
between wide scope and narrow detail, and the contextual situation
inference engine that is integral to how our minds work.
• The general premise of these scientists is that machines WILL become
smarter than us, so let's focus, tweak, and guide that inevitability.
• Their cautious yet sensible M.O.: WE WILL DESIGN THE FUTURE!
11 ©2009 Sandy Santra

12. Biotech
• Then we have the biotech camp, mainly represented at the Summit by Aubrey de Grey and Gregory
Benford. They’re developing technologies that will allow us to live longer and longer—eventually
forever—using genetics, genomics, gerontology, cryonics, and “SENS” (that’s “Strategies for
Engineered Negligible Senescence”).
• de Grey maintains that once medicine and related technologies improve to the point where they can
repair any defect of the human body, humans will have reached what he calls “Longevity Escape
Velocity,” after which point they’ll be able to live forever. His term for this landmark turning point in
human history is the Methuselarity.
• Gregory Benford has founded the company Genescient, a biotech company that “combines
evolutionary genomics with massive selective screening to analyze and exploit the genetics of
human genomes.”
• So the general premise here is that biotech advances will soon delay or obviate senescence
indefinitely, without turning you into a computer.
• Thus their M.O.: WE’LL KEEP YOU ALIVE FOREVER! AND YOU EVEN GET TO KEEP YOUR BODY!
12 ©2009 Sandy Santra

13. Neuroscience
• Finally we have the Neuroscientists, eager to use Whole Brain Emulation and other technologies
to migrate your brain to a new platform. Speaking at the seminar about these and other related
technologies were Anders Sandberg, Randal Koene, and Ed Boyden from MIT Media Lab.
• Some advantages to uploading: • Population will explode once the age of consent
• Live physically, virtually, or both is 18 minutes after birth instead of 18 years
• Brain editing, backup, and cloning • The entire world—but PCs especially—will
suddenly seem very slow to uploaded humans
• Easy software updates
• Potential “human originals” vs. clone wars
• Some disadvantages:
• And, of course, the EULA will probably be 50
• Huge ethical, political, economic impact GB.
• The Neurologists’ Premise: the human mind CAN be moved from the brain to a new and
better substrate.
• And their M.O. is surely the best sales pitch of all the camps: SURE WE CAN CLONE YOU
—NO PROBLEM! Um...would you like a backup with that?
13 ©2009 Sandy Santra

14. The Race to the Singularity
• So those are the five camps, as I see it. And there’s a bit of a race to the Singularity shaping
up between the two major camps: Artificial Intelligence and the Neuroscientists:
• The AI camp wants to build AI up from the ground using science, psychology, and
computer modeling
• The Neuroscientists are studying the brain and hope to eventually upload it to a different
substrate
• Then there’s the Independent: Biotech and its related sciences—helping you live long enough
to live forever
• And finally we have a Write-in Candidate: Stuart Hameroff, who says consciousness is so
much more than the sum of its parts—almost directly related to quantum physics, in fact—
that nobody has a clue how to get there. Yet his presentation at the Summit had more hard
science, more insightful vision, and more coherence than many of the other speakers.
14 ©2009 Sandy Santra

15. So Who Wins?
• Well, I think all three solutions will eventually come to pass: Artificial Intelligence,
brain uploading, and the Biotech camp’s Methuselarity.
• But for the two major camps, it’s unclear which will arrive first: AI or uploading.
• Perhaps a more important question is this: What can save us from the fate of humans
in cautionary tales like The Matrix?
• The Singularity Institute and Kurzweil are sharply divided on this question.
• Kurzweil thinks it will all work itself out.
• But the Institute—and many scientists—maintain that now is the time to begin
considering ethical, economic, cultural, and political implications of both AI and
human brain uploading.
15 ©2009 Sandy Santra

16. The Singularity—
Recommended Study
• “What is the Singularity?” (~2000 words)
• “Why Work Towards the Singularity?” (~4000 words)
• Singularity Summit Videos (on Vimeo) (~20 hours, $500 value, FREE)
• Ray Kurzweil: The Singularity is Near (672 pages, $13.60 @ Amazon)
• Charles Stross: Accelerando (415 pages, $7.99 @ Amazon)
16 ©2009 Sandy Santra