The Singularity Institute Blog

Here is an index of all Singularity Summit speeches.

Summit 2006

• Todd Davies, Tyler Emerson, and Peter Thiel. Introduction to the Singularity Summit.
• Ray Kurzweil. The Singularity: a hard or soft takeoff?
• Douglas Hofstadter. Trying to muse rationally about the Singularity scenario.
• Nick Bostrom. Artificial Intelligence and existential risks.
• Sebastian Thrun. Toward human-level intelligence in autonomous cars.
• Cory Doctorow. Singularity or Dark Age?.
• K. Eric Drexler. Productive Nanosystems: Toward a Super-Exponential Threshold in Physical Technology.
• Max More. Cognitive and Emotional Singularities: Will Superintelligence come with Superwisdom?
• Christine Peterson. Bringing Humanity and the Biosphere through the Singularity
• John Smart. Searching for the Big Picture: Systems Theories of Accelerating Change
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. The Human Importance of the Intelligence Explosion.
• Bill McKibben. Being good enough.
• Ray Kurzweil. Follow up.
• Panel Discussion and Q&A.
• Panel Discussion and Q&A pt. 2.

Summit 2007

• Tyler Emerson & Peter Thiel. Welcome and introduction.
• Rodney Brooks. The Singularity: A Period Not An Event.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. Introducing the “Singularity”: Three Major Schools of Thought.
• Barney Pell. Pathways to Advanced General Intelligence: Architecture, Development, and Funding.
• Wendell Wallach. Superstition and Forgetfulness – Two Essentials for Artificial General Intelligence.
• Barney Pell, Wendell Wallach, Sam Adams. First panel discussion.
• Jamais Cascio. Metaverse Singularity.
• Stephen M. Omohundro. The Nature of Self-Improving Artificial Intelligence.
• Peter Voss. Improved intelligence, improved life.
• Stephen M. Omohundro, Peter Voss. Second panel discussion.
• Neil Jacobstein. Innovative Applications of Early Stage AI.
• Ben Goertzel. Nine Years to a Positive Singularity – If We Really, Really Try.
• Paul Saffo. Machines of Loving Grace: Anticipating Advanced AI.
• Neil Jacobstein, Ben Goertzel, Paul Saffo. Third panel discussion.
• Peter Norvig. The history and future of technological change.
• J. Storrs Hall. Asimov’s laws of robotics — revised.
• Peter Thiel. Financial markets and the Singularity.
• Charles L. Harper, Jr. Superintelligence, the “Dilemma of Power,” and the transformation of desire.
• J. Storrs Hall, Peter Thiel, Charles L. Harper, Jr. Third panel discussion.
• Steve Jurvetson. Dichotomy of designed and evolutionary paths to AI futures.
• Christine L. Peterson. Preparing for bizarreness: open source physical security.
• James Hughes. Waiting for the Great Leap…Forward?
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. The Challenge of Friendly AI.
• Christine L. Peterson, James Hughes, Eliezer Yudkowsky. A dialogue with Ray Kurzweil.

Summit 2008

• Vernor Vinge and Bob Pisani. Conversation on the Singularity.
• Esther Dyson. 23andme and personal genomics.
• James Miller. Societal reactions to the Singularity.
• Eric Baum. AI and the problem of understanding.
• Dharmendra Modha. IBM’s research into Whole Brain Emulation.
• Ben Goertzel. OpenCog — an open source AGI project.
• Marshall Brain. Robotics and structural unemployment.
• Cynthia Breazeal. Social robots.
• Ray Kurzweil, Glen Zorpette and John Horgan. Debate on the Singularity.
• Pete Estep. The InnerSpace Foundation.
• Neil Gershenfeld. Alternate models of computing.
• Peter Diamandis. History of the X Prize Foundation and future X Prizes.
• Ray Kurzweil. Exponential progress in information technologies.
• Justin Rattner. Intel and the continuous of Moore’s law.
• Nova Spivack. Collective intelligence and the emerging global brain.

Summit 2009

• Michael Vassar. Introduction.
• Anna Salamon. Shaping the intelligence explosion.
• Anders Sandberg. Technical roadmap for whole brain emulation.
• Randal Koene. The time is now: as a species we need whole brain emulation.
• Itamar Arel. Technological convergence leading to artificial general intelligence.
• Ben Goertzel. Pathways to beneficial artificial general intelligence.
• Stuart Hameroff. Neural substrates of consciousness and the ‘conscious pilot’ model.
• David Chalmers. Simulation and the singularity.
• Gary Drescher. Choice machines, causality, and cooperation.
• Ed Boyden. Synthetic neurobiology: optically engineering the brain to augment its function.
• Marcus Hutter. Foundations of intelligent agents.
• William Dickens. Cognitive ability: past and future enhancements and implications.
• Ray Kurzweil. The ubiquity and predictability of the exponential growth of information technology.
• Bela Nagy. More than Moore: comparing forecasts of technological progress.
• Robin Hanson. How does society identify experts, and when does it work?
• Panel: Future of scientific method.
• Gregory Benford. Artificial biological selection for longevity.
• Ray Kurzweil. Critics of the singularity.
• Brad Templeton. The finger of AI: Automated electrical vehicles and oil independence.
• Gary Marcus. The fallibility and improvability of the human mind.
• Peter Thiel. Macroeconomics and singularity.
• Aubrey de Grey. The Singularity and the Methuselarity: similarities and differences.
• Thiel, Yudkowsky & de Grey panel: Changing the world.
• Anna Salamon. How much it matters to know what matters: A back of the envelope calculation.
• Gary Wolf. The petaflop macroscope.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. Cognitive biases and giant risks.
• Jurgen Schmidhuber. Compression progress: The algorithmic principle behind curiosity and creativity.
• Thiel, Rose & Gorenberg Panel: Venture capitalism.
• Michael Nielsen. Quantum computing: What it is, what it is not, what we have yet to learn.
• Michael Nielsen. Collaborative networks in scientific discovery.
• Stephen Wolfram. Conversation on the singularity.

Summit 2010

• Michael Vassar. The Darwinian method.
• Gregory Stock. Evolution of post-human intelligence.
• Ray Kurzweil. The mind and how to build one.
• Ben Goertzel. AI against aging.
• Steven Mann. Humanistic intelligence augmentation and mediation.
• Mandayam Srinivasan. Enhancing our bodies and evolving our brains.
• Brian Litt. The past, present and future of brain machine interfaces.
• Demis Hassabis. Combining systems neuroscience and machine learning: a new approach to AGI.
• Terry Sejnowski. Reverse-engineering brains is within reach.
• Dennis Bray. What cells can do that robots can’t.
• Terry Sejnowski/Dennis Bray debate: Simplified humanism and positive futurism.
• Ramez Naam. The digital biome.
• Lance Becker. Modifying the boundary between life and death.
• Ellen Heber-Katz. The MRL mouse – how it regenerates and how we might do the same.
• Shane Legg. Universal measures of intelligence.
• John Tooby. Can discovering the design principles governing natural intelligence unleash breakthroughs in AI?.
• Tooby, Goertzel, Yudkowsky & Legg panel. Narrow and General Intelligence.
• David Hanson. David Hanson: Why Characters Are Key to Friendly A.I..
• Irene Pepperberg. Irene Pepperberg: Nonhuman Intelligence: Where we are and where we’re headed.
• James Randi. Is there such a thing as scientific consensus?

Summit 2011

• Ray Kurzweil. From Eliza to Watson to passing the Turing Test.
• Stephen Badylak. Regenerative medicine: possibilities and potential.
• Sonia Arrison. 100 Plus: how the coming age of longevity will change everything, from careers and relationships to family and faith.
• Peter Thiel. Back to the future.
• James McLurkin. The future of robotics is swarms: why a thousand robots are better than one.
• Michael Shermer. Social Singularity: transitioning from civilization 1.0 to 2.0.
• Jason Silva. The ‘Undivided Mind’ — science and imagination.
• Stephen Wolfram. Computation and the future of mankind.
• Dmitry Itskov. Project ‘Immortality 2045′ — Russian experience.
• Christof Koch. The neurobiology and mathematics of consciousness.
• Eliezer Yudkowsky. Open problems in friendly artificial intelligence.
• Max Tegmark. The future of life: a cosmic perspective.
• Alexander Wissner-Gross. Planetary-scale intelligence.
• Sharon Bertsch McGrayne. A History of Bayes theorem.
• David Brin. So you want to make gods. Now why would that bother anybody?
• Tyler Cowen. The Great Stagnation.
• Tyler Cowen & Michael Vassar. Debate on the Great Stagnation.
• John Mauldin. The endgame meets The millennium wave — why the economic crisis will be history as we create the future.
• Riley Crane. Rethinking communication.
• Dileep George and Scott Brown. From planes to brains: building AI the Wright way.
• Jaan Tallinn. Balancing the trichotomy: individual vs. society vs. universe.
• David Ferrucci. Watson AI perceptions.
• Dan Cerutti. Commercializing Watson.
• Ken Jennings. The human brain in Jeopardy: computers that ‘think’.