We’ve added John Tooby, the founder of evolutionary psychology, to our excellent roster for this upcoming August 14-15 conference at the Hyatt Regency San Francisco, along with Ramez Naam, author of More Than Human.

For those interested in technology and science, this is a star-studded roster. I’ve listed them before on this blog, but let me mention a few of the highlight speakers yet again: Ray Kurzweil, author of The Singularity is Near, the “world’s first cyborg” Stephen Mann, animal intelligence pioneer Irene Pepperberg, leading bionanotechnologist Dr. Anita Goel, bioethicist Gregory Stock, computational neurobiologist Terry Sejnowski, creator of the world’s most realistic humanoid robots, David Hanson.

Register now, and save $200 on the at-the-door price.

https://www.singularitysummit.com/registration/

We also still have discounted hotel rooms available at the Hyatt.

See you in San Francisco! This will be one of the best science/technology conferences ever.

There only a week to register for our conference before the price goes up again — right now it is $485. Students get $100 off. For every non-student you refer who signs up, you get an additional $100 off, with no limit. How do referrals work? Get your friend to sign up, then email me, and I’ll send you a special discount code. There are also major discounts on hotel reservations, if you hurry — Hyatt rooms are available for the special rate of $139 — much less than the usual $199.

Why is the Singularity Summit important? I wrote up some longer thoughts on that at my personal blog, but the basic answer is that the Singularity Summit is truly a uniquely valuable conference — there isn’t anything else like it for science, technology, and futurism thinkers. Few conferences have top scientific experts from so many varying fields: Artificial Intelligence, robotics, computational neuroscience, brain-computer interfaces, nanobiotechnology, augmented reality, regenerative medicine, and a lot more. If you attend, you will find that this is the most intellectually stimulating conference you’ve attended all year, and with some of the best networking in one of the hottest innovation zones on the planet.

This year’s Singularity Summit will be held on August 14-15 at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency. Speakers include:

Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, author of The Singularity is Near
James Randi, renowned skeptic and debunker, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation
Dr. Anita Goel, a leader in the field of bionanotechnology, Founder & CEO, Nanobiosym, Inc.
Dr. Irene Pepperberg, leading investigator of animal intelligence, trainer of the African Grey Parrot “Alex”
Prof. Alan Snyder, Director, Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, researcher in brain-computer interfaces
Prof. Steven Mann, augmented reality pioneer, professor at University of Toronto, “world’s first cyborg”
Dr. Gregory Stock, bioethicist and biotech entrepreneur, author of Engineering Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future
Dr. Ellen Haber-Katz, a professor at the Wistar Institute who studies rapid-regenerating mice
Joe Z. Tsien, scholar at the Medical College of Georgia, who created a strain of “Doogie Mouse” with twice the memory of average mice
Eliezer Yudkowsky, research fellow with the Singularity Institute
Michael Vassar, president of the Singularity Institute
David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics, creator of the world’s most realistic humanoid robots
Demis Hassabis, research fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at the University of London

…and many others. We hope to see you in San Francisco on August 14th!

The Singularity Summit 2010 features a variety of discounts for registration, including $100 off for students and $100 off for every non-student referral. However, the greatest discounts are for registering early — there is a $300 discount off the at-the-door cost of the conference if you register by midnight tonight, Monday the 7th. After that, there will only be a $200 discount until July 1st, and a $100 discount until August 1st. If you register now, you can get your ticket for $385, or $285 if you’re a student or make a referral. There is no limit on discounts for non-student referrals, so you can refer multiple people for an even greater discount. See you August 14-15 for this exciting conference at the San Francisco Hyatt!

It’s that time of the year again — the Singularity Summit 2010 is scheduled for August 14-15 at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. See you there! Here is our press release:

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.

Humanity+, the worldwide association of transhumanists, is putting on a conference at Harvard on June 12-13. Tickets are available here (be sure to use that specific URL to register so SIAI can earn 20% of ticket cost as a referral bonus). The theme is “rise of the citizen scientist”. Here is all the blurb:

The summer 2010 “Humanity+ @ Harvard – The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist” conference is being held, after the inaugural conference in Los Angeles in December 2009, on the East Coast, at Harvard University’s prestigious Science Hall on June 12-13. Futurist, inventor, and author of the NYT bestselling book “The Singularity Is Near”, Ray Kurzweil is going to be keynote speaker of the conference. Full information is at http://hplussummit.com

Also speaking at the H+ Summit @ Harvard is Aubrey de Grey, a biomedical gerontologist based in Cambridge, UK, and is the Chief Science Officer of SENS Foundation, a California-based charity dedicated to combating the aging process. His talk, “Hype and anti-hype in academic biogerontology research: a call to action”, will analyze the interplay of over-pessimistic and over-optimistic positions with regards of research and development of cures, and propose solutions to alleviate the negative effects of both.

The theme is “The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist”, as illustrated in his talk by Alex Lightman, Executive Director of Humanity+:

“Knowledge may be expanding exponentially, but the current rate of civilizational learning and institutional upgrading is still far too slow in the century of peak oil, peak uranium, and “peak everything”. Humanity needs to gather vastly more data as part of ever larger and more widespread scientific experiments, and make science and technology flourish in streets, fields, and homes as well as in university and corporate laboratories.”

Humanity+ Summit @ Harvard is an unmissable event for everyone who is interested in the evolution of the rapidly changing human condition, and the impact of accelerating technological change on the daily lives of individuals, and on our society as a whole. Tickets start at only $150, with an additional 50% discount for students registering with the coupon STUDENTDISCOUNT (valid student ID required at the time of admission).

With over 40 speakers, and 50 sessions in two jam packed days, the attendees, and the speakers will have many opportunities to interact, and discuss, complementing the conference with the necessary networking component.

Other speakers already listed on the H+ Summit program page include:

* David Orban, Chairman of Humanity+: “Intelligence Augmentation,
Decision Power, And The Emerging Data Sphere”
* Heather Knight, CTO of Humanity+: “Why Robots Need to Spend More
Time in the Limelight”
* Andrew Hessel, Co-Chair at Singularity University: “Altered
Carbon: The Emerging Biological Diamond Age”
* M. A. Greenstein, Art Center College of Design: “Sparking our
Neural Humanity with Neurotech!”
* Michael Smolens, CEO of dotSUB: “Removing language as a barrier to
cross cultural communication”

New speakers will be announced in rapid succession, rounding out a schedule that is guaranteed to inform, intrigue, stimulate and provoke, in moving ahead our planetary understanding of the evolution of the human condition!

H+ Summit @ Harvard – The Rise Of The Citizen Scientist
June 12-13, Harvard University
Cambridge, MA

When you register, please use the URL
http://www.eventbrite.com/event/648806598/friendsofhplus/4283047925 for
tracking purposes.

I’ve created a group for the Singularity Institute on LinkedIn, to encourage professional networking among SIAI supporters and staff. Consider joining if you are an SIAI supporter and use LinkedIn.

Here is a quote from the Chalmers paper that I linked yesterday:

One might think that the singularity would be of great interest to academic philosophers, cognitive scientists, and artificial intelligence researchers. In practice, this has not been the case. Good was an eminent academic, but his article was largely unappreciated at the time. The subsequent discussion of the singularity has largely taken place in nonacademic circles, including Internet forums, popular media and books, and workshops organized by the independent Singularity Institute. Perhaps the highly speculative flavor of the singularity idea has been responsible for academic resistance to the idea.

I think this resistance is a shame, as the singularity idea is clearly an important one. The argument for a singularity is one that we should take seriously. And the questions surrounding the singularity are of enormous practical and philosophical concern.

Practically: If there is a singularity, it will be one of the most important events in the history of the planet. An intelligence explosion has enormous potential benefits: a cure for all known diseases, an end to poverty, extraordinary scientific advances, and much more. It also has enormous potential dangers: an end to the human race, an arms race of warring machines, the power to destroy the planet. So if there is even a small chance that there will be a singularity, we would do well to think about what forms it might take and whether there is anything we can do to influence the outcomes in a positive direction.

Great advice for everyone living in the 21st century!

Amnon Eden, an organizer of the European conference on Computing And Philosophy, recently sent us this call for papers.

Track in:

8th European conference on Computing And Philosophy — ECAP 2010
Technische Universität München
4–6 October 2010

Important dates:

* Submission (extended abstracts): 7 May 2010
* Notification: 9 May 2010
* ECAP Conference: 4–6 October 2010

Submission form

Theme

Historical analysis of a broad range of paradigm shifts in science, biology, history, technology, and in particular in computing technology, suggests an accelerating rate of evolution, however measured. John von Neumann projected that the consequence of this trend may be an “essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs as we know them could not continue”. This notion of singularity coincides in time and nature with Alan Turing (1950) and Stephen Hawking’s (1998) expectation of machines to exhibit intelligence on a par with to the average human no later than 2050. Irving John Good (1965) and Vernor Vinge (1993) expect the singularity to take the form of an ‘intelligence explosion’, a process in which intelligent machines design ever more intelligent machines. Transhumanists suggest a parallel or alternative, explosive process of improvements in human intelligence. And Alvin Toffler’s Third Wave (1980) forecasts “a collision point in human destiny” the scale of which, in the course of history, is on the par only with the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution.

We invite submissions describing systematic attempts at understanding the likelihood and nature of these projections. In particular, we welcome papers critically analyzing the following issues from a philosophical, computational, mathematical, scientific and ethical standpoints:

* Claims and evidence to acceleration
* Technological predictions (critical analysis of past and future)
* The nature of an intelligence explosion and its possible outcomes
* The nature of the Technological Singularity and its outcome
* Safe and unsafe artificial general intelligence and preventative measures
* Technological forecasts of computing phenomena and their projected impact
* Beyond the ‘event horizon’ of the Technological Singularity
* The prospects of transhuman breakthroughs and likely timeframes

Amnon H. Eden, School of Computer Science & Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, UK and Center For Inquiry, Amherst NY

Recently, David Chalmers announced that he was posting a new paper based on his Singularity Summit 2010 talk: “The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis”. In his announcement, Chalmers notes, “I’m still an amateur on these topics and any feedback would be appreciated.” You can also watch a video of Chalmers’ Summit talk.