NASA & Google Join Forces to Research Singularity -the "Intelligence Revolution" (VIDEO)

It is the best of times.  Anyone who complains about science not delivering it's promises simply doesn't comprehend how incredible this information age truly is: you can go to the mall RIGHT NOW and buy devices which would have reshaped the world ten years ago, are reshaping it today, and technology isn't slowing down - it's accelerating exponentially.  There are incredible innovations just around the corner and that's the thinking behind the creation of Singularity University.. 

An advanced academic institution sponsored by leading lights including NASA and 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.

Posted by Luke McKinney.

Raymond Kurzweil discusses technological progress and announces the Singularity University 

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence

Comments

[johnny5]

NICE go nasa!

Electronic Cigarette

[Cory Comer]

It's good to see Kurzweil's ideas being taken up by groups such as NASA and Google, and being given even more credibility beyond the academic realm.

I for one welcome our new super-intelligent overlords.

[Jason Weider]

Wow, way cool dude, way cool!

RT
www.privacy-tools.echoz.com

[Mike Draper]

This has all happened before.
It will happen again.

[Matt, Hartford]

Mike is right. And not for the first time.

[Narendra Nath]

Wonderful idea conceptually. Although mostly individuals innovate but the implementation requires team effort. Finally it all boils down to how good the humans are in the team. Hope the new University will also cater to building up world wide goodwill and cooperation. The world needs to become safe for all not for some.Raymond Kurtzweil has my best wishes as a innovator and holder of patents, some of which have yet to see the benefits extended to people at large!

[Zora Winfrey]

Making apes to speak would be much more fun than AI.

[Bob Mottram]

"you can go to the mall RIGHT NOW and buy devices which would have reshaped the world ten years ago"

Which devices are you referring to here?

[Edward Coughlin]

Every time I see this I can't help but think about the Terminator movies, Battlestar Galactica, iRobot ect ect. I prefer the idea of the singularity where we integrate ourselves with nano-machines that make humans significantly smarter rather then ceding the intellectual high ground to machines which can destroy us and probably would.

If you think about it, relative to machines that can run on solar power indefinitely, humans (and really all life) is pretty destructive and inefficient. If they're smarter then us and don't need us why would they keep us around? Look at how humans, the current top of the intellectual food chain, treat the rest of the creatures of the world (as food, as game, as impediments ect) why would a new highest intelligence think of us as any differently? Maybe a few of us would be kept around in some sort of Robot run zoo at best.

[MIke]

has anyone heard of the Electronic Cigarette ? NOw this is some real innovation and a technological novalty... Cigarettes with NO SMOKE and pollution. GO figure whats next.