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COFES Blog
Sep
24
Written by:
Joel Orr
9/24/2007
(It's the second summit, not the second singularity.) The singularity is the putative "tipping point" that will occur when the combination of computers and networks get really smart and gain consciousness - whatever that means. The general assumption is that the processes leading to the singularity will include software that modifies and improves itself, and the general consensus is that this will be a development of the area of computation known as "artificial intelligence," or ai.
Now, ai, in its early incarnations, offered such things as "expert systems," "chess programs," "theorem solving," and other stuff that turned out to be difficult to commercialize. Its development continues, but for investors - and hence for startups - we've had an "ai winter" for the last couple of decades or so. To distinguish the magic that could lead to the singularity from that older stuff, proponents are using the term, "artificial general intelligence," or agi.
The conference was impressive in terms of intellectual content, sponsors, speakers, and attendees. About 900 people showed up to hear the likes of Rodney Brooks (head of MIT's Computer Science and AI Lab); Peter Norvig (Google's director of research); Peter Theil (Paypal, Facebook founder and sponsor of the summit); futurist Paul Saffo; leading singularity thinker Ray Kurzweil; and other smart, articulate, and interesting speakers.
Not all the speakers believe in the singularity's advent, imminently or at all. The most convincing pro-singularity speaker, to me, was Ben Goertzel, a successful software professional who is probably further along than anyone in building an agi framework (visit Novamente.com, his company site, for details).
Discussions ranged from ethical to social to technical speculations: Do we need to control agi? If so, how can we do it? If a conscious system emerges, will it like us? Will it care about us? Will it even notice us? Will we grow agis like babies, taking them through Piaget's stages of development?
Several of the skeptics asked questions like, "If we can't even produce a non-sucking operating system or word processor, how in the world will we produce an agi?" I sympathize with that sentiment. But the advocates' responses hinge around the exponential explosion of intelligence inherent in software that begins to design itself.
There is much, much more to this discussion, and much that is non-trivial. You can listen to all the audio from the conference - and learn more about the singularty - by going to www.singinst.org.
Tags:
2 comment(s) so far...
Re: Second Singularity Summit
Joel,
Thanks for the summary. I think you meant http://www.novamente.net/
Onward,
Jack
By jring281 on
11/4/2007
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Re: Second Singularity Summit
Indeed! Thanks, Jack.
By Joel on
11/4/2007
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