THE SINGULARITY SUMMIT 2010 (day 1)

DAY ONE

San Francisco, Hyatt Regency

Six hundred very smart people sharing information on artificial intelligence (AI) versus the human mind--silicon versus biocarbon.  Can the biorevolution prevail?  Interesting funding coming from the Defense Advanced Projects Agency.

Tomorrow, a talk on the Future of Energy, plus The Great Randi. The focus of this weekend, though, is on biocarbon versus silicon versus consciousness into the future.  The conference starts at 8AM with a Boudin breakfast and goes on till 7PM, each day (today and tomorrow).  I've never sat in for 10 straight hours of lectures at a conference in my life...and the room was still almost at capacity at 7PM.

Michael Vassar, President, Singularity Institute (The Darwinian Method)

Archimedes was not science (it was progress by genius).  We need a synthesis of both scholarly science and enlightenment science to anticipate a technological singularity.

Gregory Stock, Signum Biosciences (Evolution and the Posthuman Future)

There has been an explosion of biota (four orders of magnitude in six years).  With artificial intelligence (AI), human values will be discarded because there will be backup and copies in a world absent of sexual reproduction.

Evolutionary breakthroughs: creation of life 3.3 billion years ago and formation of multiple cells about a billion years ago. Now, the super organism linking humanity with technology on Planet Earth. What next? Lines are blurring between natural and artificial. Will humanity as we know it survive?

Ray Kurzweil, inventor, restless genius (The Mind and How to Build One)

We are two decades from fully modeling and simulating the human brain.  At that point there will be computers millions of times more powerful than our brain.  Picture all this intelligence networked in a virtual system.  Only then will we solve the challenges of our civilization.

The price of infobits/dollar has dropped a billionfold since he was a student.  Bioinfo costs are declining at a steeper slope.  Just observe the explosion of capability and links on the world wide web over the past twenty years.  Given continuing exponential change, a breakthrough singularity will be attained...and soon.  However, there is no consensus on this concept of singularity.

As hinted at in my HuffPo on Immortality and Human Cloning, there was some discussion on how the information in your mind might someday be measured, captured, whatever, to transfer to your new cloned body.  But how can consciousness and human values be modeled?  Can consciousness be measured?  He says no, and yet, consciousness cannot be ignored.  Quantum theory does not allow for these feelings, but computer modeling might.  Such is the nature of the field and singularity in general today.

(Kurzweil's on vacation in Massachusetts, so this  was a live teleconference with him.  As much as there is something special about personal interaction to build functional relationships, the reality of carbon footprint, time and expense is already integrating technology and humanity to transform these gatherings.)

Ben Goertzel,  CEO of Novamente and Biomind (AI Against Aging)

Can mitochondrial DNA be better protected, such as, perhaps, being moved into the nucleus, thus reducing aging?  He then went into the science of senescence, "antagonistic pleotropy", Methuselah flies (yes, they live much longer, and, as would be expected, we share a lot of their genes, which are close to being genomically sequenced) and similar elements in the field.  After the fly, then to mice, and, finally, to humans.  In short, though, prolonging life will be a lot more complex than just checking one aging gene or finding a simple cocktail, although there are a few dozen key aging-associated genes.

While AI systems are already comprehending our biological world in ways far beyond the limits of our brain--and this is but a fraction of what yet is to come--we need intelligent artificial biologists to expand Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) to transcend mere AI.  Here is where, perhaps, human values can survive.  Read AIs, "Superflies and the Path to Immortality" in H+ magazine.

A LONG LUNCH!

Steve Mann, professor at the University of Toronto, world's first cyborg (Extending Ourselves with Technology)

Yes, bold and crazy, maybe on the lunatic fringe.  He was into wearable computers while in high school.  He entertained the audience first on Ryan Janzen's hydraulophone (blue bubble water instrument).  Sounded like an organ.  He was also wearing an eye tap (goggles) that featured a camera capturing what he was seeing, which was shown on the screen, no doubt inducing seasickness in some, especially me.

Mann does RD on intelligent vision, but most of the program, with Janzen, had to do with next generation sounds.  Future music?

Mandayam Srinivasan, MIT tactile haptics specialist (Enhancing Our Bodies and Evolving Our Brain)

Machines extend our ability to interact with the world around us.  More and more technology removes our limitations providing unprecedented stimuli and responses in real and virtual worlds.  The future of  these conferences could well be through these devices.  Someday, the magic of teleportation will not involve dissociating and reassociating your  body, but, rather, an electronic haptic system.

Brian Litt, professor neurology and bioengineering at the University of Pennsylvania (Brain-Computer Interfaces:  Past, Present and Future)

BCI research today is at the beginning of what the movie Inception does today.  Litt Lab is into translational neuroengineering.

Terms like neuroplasticity, visual prosthesis, evolving algorithms, cochlear interfacing, afferential something or another, and worse, were tossed around.  Yet, the lecture was somehow mostly understandable.

Demis Hassabis, Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at the University College London (Combining Systems neuroscience and Machine Learning:  A New Approach to AGI)

In case you did not know, AGI stands for Artificial General Intelligence.  Anyway, now a neuroscientist, Hassabis was the highest rated 13 year old chess prodigy, at 17 was co-creator of a computer game, Theme Park, which hit #1, selling 3.5 million copies, then went on for his PhD in computer systems.  He is involved with algorithms of the brain and system neuroscience. Of course, terms like optogenetics, two-photon microscopy, TMS, MVPA and more littered the powerpoints.  Can you believe that there were 50,000 neuroscience papers just in 2008?  And the field is just starting.

Patri Friedman implored on why we should donate to the Singularity Institute.  An anonymous donor will match up to $100,000.  I went up to say hi, for Patri is leading the Seasteading Institute to build floating utopias.

Terrence Sejnowski, Salk Institute (Reverse-Engineering Brains Within Reach)

Your brain will be enhanced someday with cognitive devices, such as a car that can communicate with other similarly capable vehicles to more safely and quickly bring you to your destination.  The national grid will optimally generate and wheel power by integrating all the parameters (natural condition, anticipated demand and corporate profits) to control the electrical network.  This, actually, is already happening with smart grids.

Dennis Bray, University of Cambridge (What Cells Can Do That Robots Can't)


Biology over robotics...biocarbon will trump silicon...real world futures will better be controlled by living cells.  He detailed the development of the biocomputer...I think.


Sejnoski and Bray (Moderated by Michael Vassar, Debate:  Will We Soon Realistically Emulate Biological Systems?)

They agreed that the cell is an amazing "computer," for bacteria have survived for billions of years.  Now, how can we optimally integrate this incredible capability incorporating biosystems into a functioning system.  Ultimately genetically engineered biomolecules...who knows where this will go.

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The Dow Jones Industrials edged down 17 to 10,303, with world markets mixed.  Gold went up $3/toz to $1216 and crude oil remains at $75/barrel.

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Only a minor disturbance in the East Pacific.

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