Topic: The Future
Vinod Khosla, Silicon Valley venture capitalist, says he used to be an environmentalist, but is now more of a "pragmentalist." In this Stanford Center for Social Innovation sponsored audio lecture, Khosla turns conventional wisdom about what passes for "green technology" on its head. He takes a hard look at how innovations such as hybrid cars and fuel cell buses may, in fact, be exacerbating our problems, and offers concrete, iconoclastic suggestions as to what science, business, and government should be focusing on instead.
As Christine Peterson, cofounder of the Foresight Nanotech Institute puts it, "It is a scary world ahead." With threats possible by traditional, biological, and nano-technological means, Peterson questions the current approaches to security in this speech from the 2007 Singularity Summit. Instead, she proposes using lessons from the open source software model in a bottom-up approach might provide more effective security sensing.
Design or evolution? In building complex, artificial intelligence systems, is it best to use top down design, a gradual evolutionary process, or a combination of the two in order to maintain some level of control? Steve Jurvetson, Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson, is placing his money on iterative evolutionary algorithms as the best path to the future of artificial intelligence.
Steve Jelley, Eric Lindstrom, Matt Locke, and Jeremy Silver discuss digital media in the context of teen social networking, books, activism, and predictions of what the digital future will look like. Because we are a social race and need to communicate, content will remain even when platforms mutate and we create and talk about content in new ways. Each panelist gives his predictions of the dramatic changes which will define the digital world just ten years from now.
In this session from the 2008 Where 2.0 conference, Sean Gorman discusses Finder!, the browser-based application for finding and sharing GeoData. Gorman gives a bit of history about GeoCommons, a product which brings geo-content to the web. He proposes a federation of the data of all the companies doing the same, with the goal of an ecosystem where users can combine GeoData with other web data to create semantic relationships and solve meaningful problems such as where to buy a house.
Dr. Charles L. Harper, Jr. asks some "off the wall questions" to challenge readiness of the scientific community to recognize the potential risks and implications of rapid human technological development. Where should our concerns lie given the potential ofsuper intelligent machines that could far exceed human intellectual capabilities? Are we up to the task of proper stewardship of such powerful new advances in technology, or more significantly will that role even be ours?
Could Hammurabi have written the laws to prevent the Enron scandal? J. Storrs Hall, scientist and author Of Beyond AI, poses this question to demonstrate the near impossible challenge confronting scientists in the current discussion of machine ethics. The future of AI envisions machines with the capacity to far exceed humans in knowledge and intelligence. It is a far greater problem than the one for which Isaac Asimov originally wrote the Three Laws of Robotics.
How do you create a friendly Artificial Intelligence? Eliezer Yudkowsky, Co-Founder & Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, has focused his work on overcoming some of the mathematical impediments to building a self-improving AI. In this presentation he discusses the very speculative possibilities of creating an artificial mind infused with a sense of direction, and capable of learning from its own mistakes.
Dr. Moira Gunn speaks with Business Week journalist and author, Steven Baker, about his latest book, "The Numerati." In his book, Baker discusses the impact of digital technology in the world: toll booths, credit cards, and immediate access to information.
The Technological Singularity - the moment when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence - is coming. According to Vernor Vinge, who invented the term, it will occur sometime around 2030. In this interview with Spectrum Radio's Harry Goldstein, mathematician and science fiction author Vernor Vinge discusses his latest novel "Rainbow's End" and the concept of the Singularity as depicted in his book.