Offering unusually good philanthropic returns — meaning greater odds of a positive Singularity and lesser odds of human extinction — the Singularity Institute has launched a new challenge campaign. The sponsors, Edwin Evans, Rolf Nelson, Henrik Jonsson, Jason Joachim, and Robert Lecnik, have generously put up $100,000 of matching funds, so that every donation you [...]2009 has been a year of growth and new horizons for the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI). We achieved a number of milestones relevant to our mission — pursuing dialogue, research, and activism to promote a beneficial Singularity. The response we’ve received has been considerable — SIAI is more high-profile and frequently-mentioned [...]The Uncertain Future, a web application built by Michael Anissimov, Steve Rayhawk, Anna Salamon, Tom McCabe, and Rolf Nelson during the Singularity Institute Summer 2008 Research Program, with helpful discussions with a few others, is now in beta and ready for public announcement.
The Uncertain Future represents a new kind of futurism — futurism with heavy-tailed, [...]Peter de Blanc (Temple University), an SIAI Visiting Fellow, has recently published the final version of his most recent paper, titled “Convergence of Expected Utility for Universal Artificial Intelligence“. The paper, based on earlier work in the field of expected utility theory by Marcus Hutter (Australian National University) and SIAI Research Fellow Eliezer Yudkowsky, proves [...]Just prior to Singularity Summit 2009, Singularity Institute President Michael Vassar did a podcast with “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe”, produced by the New England Skeptical Society in association with the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF).
Skip to 26:00 to get past the news items. Here’s a funny tidbit of Michael talking about [...]SIAI was invited to contribute a series of articles to Good.is, the website of GOOD magazine, which focuses on philanthropy and activism. The first article, “What is the Singularity?” is now live, and new articles will appear every Monday through January 26th. Myself and SIAI volunteer Roko Mijic will be alternating posts.
For an [...]Check out my blog post, “Hungry Optimizers with Low-Complexity Values” at Accelerating Future.
For an interesting example of the power of lateral thinking solving scientific problems, check out the article “Was our oldest ancestor a proton-powered rock?” at New Scientist.
The videos for Singularity Summit 2009 are now available at Vimeo. The few that are missing are either still awaiting confirmation of permission or the speaker asked for video not to be posted of their talk.