Singularity Summit on Advanced AI

Now in its second year, the Singularity Summit has become a two day event, starting tomorrow, Saturday September 8, 2007 at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts Theatre. The topic of discussion: saucy and enticing as always - to address the promise and peril of advanced AI to the future of humanity.

Elise Ackerman at the Mercury News just did a piece on the Summit yesterday noting to Venture Capitalists: prepare for artificial intelligence.

What are the major challenges to achieving advanced AI? What are the benefits and dangers? How far are we from self-improving AI? How should we prepare for this potentially powerful innovation?

These are among the questions that 18 outstanding thinkers will explore and debate. Advanced AI has the potential to impact every aspect of human life and yet today, only a small group of scientists are aware of the serious central issues. It is essential to expand the discussion of this critical 21st century issue. Tickets can be purchased online for only $50 for both days.

Peter Thiel, PayPal Cofounder, Clarium Capital President, and Facebook's initial investor, will MC the summit and present his new ideas on financial markets and the Singularity. 

The Singularity Summit speakers include:
* Dr. Rodney Brooks, famous MIT roboticist and founder of iRobot
* Dr. Peter Norvig, director of research at Google
* Paul Saffo, Stanford, leading technology forecaster
* Sam Adams, distinguished engineer within IBM's Research Division
* Jamais Cascio, cofounder of World Changing and creator of Open the Future
* Dr. Ben Goertzel, director of research at SIAI and founder and CEO of Novamente
* Dr. J. Storrs Hall, author of Beyond AI: Creating the Conscience of the Machine
* Dr. Charles L. Harper, Jr., senior VP at John Templeton Foundation
* Dr. James Hughes, executive director of Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
* Neil Jacobstein, distinguished AI expert and CEO of Teknowledge

* Steve Jurvetson, prominent polymath and managing director at Draper Fisher Jurvetson
* Dr. Stephen Omohundro, founder and president of Self-Aware Systems
* Dr. Barney Pell, founder and CEO of Powerset
* Christine Peterson, cofounder and VP of public policy at Foresight Nanotech Institute
* Peter Thiel, cofounder and former CEO of PayPal and founder and president of Clarium
* Wendell Wallach, author of Machine Morality: From Aristotle to Asimov and Beyond
* Eliezer Yudkowsky, Friendly AI pioneer and cofounder and research fellow at SIAI
* Peter Voss, founder and CEO of Adaptive Artificial Intelligence

"To any thoughtful person, the Singularity idea, even if it seems wild, raises a gigantic, swirling cloud of profound and vital questions about humanity and the powerful technologies it is producing," said Douglas R. Hofstadter at last year's Singularity Summit at Stanford, author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, which won a Pulitzer Prize in 1980.

Be sure not to miss it.

Disclosure: I'm a consultant to the Singularity Summit.