The Singularity Summit was the annual conference of the

Machine Intelligence Research Institute The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), is a non-profit research institute focused since 2005 on identifying and managing potential existential risks from artif ...

. It was started in 2006 at Stanford University by

Ray Kurzweil Raymond Kurzweil ( ; born February 12, 1948) is an American computer scientist, author, inventor, and futurist. He is involved in fields such as optical character recognition (OCR), text-to-speech synthesis, speech recognition technology, and ...

Eliezer Yudkowsky Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky (born September 11, 1979) is an American decision theory and artificial intelligence (AI) researcher and writer, best known for popularizing the idea of friendly artificial intelligence. He is a co-founder and research ...

, and

Peter Thiel Peter Andreas Thiel (; born 11 October 1967) is a German-American billionaire entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and political activist. A co-founder of PayPal, Palantir Technologies, and Founders Fund, he was the first outside investor in Fac ...

, and the subsequent summits in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, and 2012 have been held in

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish language, Spanish for "Francis of Assisi, Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the List of Ca ...

, San Jose,

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the U ...

, and

respectively. Some speakers have included

Sebastian Thrun Sebastian Thrun (born May 14, 1967) is a German-American entrepreneur, educator, and computer scientist. He is CEO of Kitty Hawk Corporation, and chairman and co-founder of Udacity. Before that, he was a Google VP and Fellow, a Professor of Com ...

Rodney Brooks Rodney Allen Brooks (born 30 December 1954) is an Australian roboticist, Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, author, and robotics entrepreneur, most known for popularizing the actionist approach to robotics. He was a Panasonic Profe ...

, Barney Pell,

Marshall Brain Marshall David Brain II (born May 17, 1961) is an American author, public speaker, futurist, and entrepreneur who specializes in making complex topics easy to understand. Brain is the founder of HowStuffWorks.com and the author of the ''How Stuf ...

, Justin Rattner,

Peter Diamandis Peter H. Diamandis (; born May 20, 1961) is a Greek-American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being founder and chairman of the X Prize Foundation, cofounder and executive chairman of Singularity University and coauthor of ...

Stephen Wolfram Stephen Wolfram (; born 29 August 1959) is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Ma ...

Gregory Benford Gregory Benford (born January 30, 1941) is an American science fiction author and astrophysicist who is professor emeritus at the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. He is a contributing editor of ''Reason ...

Robin Hanson Robin Dale Hanson (born August 28, 1959) is an associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known for his work on idea futures and markets, a ...

, Anders Sandberg, Juergen Schmidhuber,

Aubrey de Grey Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey (; born 20 April 1963) is an English author and biomedical gerontologist. He is the author of ''The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging'' (1999) and co-author of ''Ending Aging'' (2007). He is known ...

Max Tegmark Max Erik Tegmark (born 5 May 1967) is a Swedish-American physicist, cosmologist and machine learning researcher. He is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the president of the Future of Life Institute. He is also a scie ...

, and

Michael Shermer Michael Brant Shermer (born September 8, 1954) is an American science writer, historian of science, executive director of The Skeptics Society, and founding publisher of '' Skeptic'' magazine, a publication focused on investigating pseudoscientif ...

. There have also been spinoff conferences in Melbourne, Australia in 2010, 2011 and 2012. Previous speakers include

David Chalmers David John Chalmers (; born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York Univer ...

Lawrence Krauss Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born May 27, 1954) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who previously taught at Arizona State University, Yale University, and Case Western Reserve University. He founded ASU's Origins Project, now ca ...

, Ben Goertzel,

Steve Omohundro Stephen Malvern Omohundro (born 1959) is an American computer scientist whose areas of research include Hamiltonian physics, dynamical systems, programming languages, machine learning, machine vision, and the social implications of artificia ...

, Hugo de Garis,

Marcus Hutter Marcus Hutter (born April 14, 1967 in Munich) is DeepMind Senior Scientist researching the mathematical foundations of artificial general intelligence. He is on leave from his professorship at the ANU College of Engineering and Computer Sci ...

, Mark Pesce, Stelarc and Randal A. Koene.

2006

The first Singularity Summit took place in 2006 at Stanford University. ;SpeakersMachine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) Singularity Summit Speakers: 2006 to 2012
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Nick Bostrom Nick Bostrom ( ; sv, Niklas Boström ; born 10 March 1973) is a Swedish-born philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk, the anthropic principle, human enhancement ethics, superintelligence risks, and th ...

, Todd Davies,

Cory Doctorow Cory Efram Doctorow (; born July 17, 1971) is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who served as co-editor of the blog '' Boing Boing''. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent o ...

, K. Eric Drexler, Tyler Emerson,

Douglas Hofstadter Douglas Richard Hofstadter (born February 15, 1945) is an American scholar of cognitive science, physics, and comparative literature whose research includes concepts such as the sense of self in relation to the external world, consciousness, an ...

Bill McKibben William Ernest McKibben (born December 8, 1960)"Bill Ernest McKibben." ''Environmental Encyclopedia''. Edited by Deirdre S. Blanchfield. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2009. Retrieved via ''Biography in Context'' database, December 31, 2017. is a ...

Max More Max More (born Max T. O'Connor, January 1964, with name legally changed in 1990) is a philosopher and futurist who writes, speaks, and consults on advanced decision-making about emerging technologies. He is the current Ambassador and President Em ...

Christine Peterson Christine Peterson is an American forecaster, and the co-founder of Foresight Institute. She is credited with suggesting the term "open source" when used in connection with software. Peterson holds a bachelor's degree in chemistry from MIT.

, John Smart,

2007

The second Singularity Summit took place in 2007 in San Francisco. ;Speakers Sam Adams,

, Jamais Cascio, Tyler Emerson, Ben Goertzel, J. Storrs Hall, Charles L. Harper Jr, James Hughes, Neil Jacobstein, Steve Jurvetson,

Peter Norvig Peter Norvig (born December 14, 1956) is an American computer scientist and Distinguished Education Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI. He previously served as a director of research and search quality at Google. Norvig is ...

, Stephen M. Omohundro, Barney Pell, Christine L. Peterson,

Paul Saffo Paul may refer to: * Paul (given name), a given name (includes a list of people with that name) * Paul (surname), a list of people People Christianity *Paul the Apostle (AD c.5–c.64/65), also known as Saul of Tarsus or Saint Paul, early Chr ...

, Peter Voss, Wendell Wallach,

2008

The 2008 Singularity Summit took place in San Jose ;Speakers Eric Baum,

Cynthia Breazeal Cynthia Breazeal is an American robotics scientist and entrepreneur. She is a former chief scientist and chief experience officer of Jibo, a company she co-founded in 2012 that developed personal assistant robots. Her most recent work has focus ...

Esther Dyson Esther Dyson (born 14 July 1951) is a Swiss-born American investor, journalist, author, commentator and philanthropist. She is the executive founder of Wellville, a nonprofit project focused on improving equitable wellbeing. Dyson is also an an ...

, Pete Estep,

Neil Gershenfeld Neil Adam Gershenfeld (born December 1, 1959) is an American professor at MIT and the director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, a sister lab to the MIT Media Lab. His research studies are predominantly focused in interdisciplinary studies ...

, Ben Goertzel,

John Horgan John Joseph Horgan (born August 7, 1959) is a Canadian politician who served as the 36th premier of British Columbia from 2017 to 2022, and also as the leader of the British Columbia New Democratic Party from 2014 to 2022. Horgan has been the ...

, Jame Miller, Dharmendra Modha,

Bob Pisani Robert V. Pisani (born 1956) is a correspondent for CNBC. Career Pisani has worked for CNBC since 1990. Until 1997, Pisani largely covered the real estate industry and corporate management. Since then, he has reported live from the floor of the ...

, Justin Rattner,

Nova Spivack Nova Spivack is an American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and author. He is the founder and CEO of the early stage science and technology incubator Magical and co-founder of The Arch Mission Foundation. Spivack previously co-founded Bottlen ...

Vernor Vinge Vernor Steffen Vinge (; born October 2, 1944) is an American science fiction author and retired professor. He taught mathematics and computer science at San Diego State University. He is the first wide-scale popularizer of the technological singu ...

, Glen Zorpette

2009

The 2009 Singularity Summit took place in New York ;Speakers Itamar Arel,

, Ed Boyden,

, Gary Drescher, Ben Goertzel,

Stuart Hameroff Stuart Hameroff (born July 16, 1947) is an American anesthesiologist and professor at the University of Arizona known for his studies of consciousness and his controversial contention that consciousness originates from quantum states in neural m ...

, Randal Koene,

Gary Marcus Gary F. Marcus (born February 8, 1970) is a professor emeritus of psychology and neural science at New York University. In 2014 he founded Geometric Intelligence, a machine-learning company later acquired by Uber. Marcus's books include ''Guitar ...

, Bela Nagy,

Michael Nielsen Michael Aaron Nielsen (born January 4, 1974) is a quantum physicist, science writer, and computer programming researcher living in San Francisco. Work In 1998, Nielsen received his PhD in physics from the University of New Mexico. In 2004, he wa ...

, Anna Salamon, Anders Sandberg, Jurgen Schmidhuber,

Brad Templeton Brad Templeton (born June 1960 near Toronto) is a Canadian software developer, internet entrepreneur, online community pioneer, publisher of news, comedy, science fiction and e-books, writer, photographer, civil rights advocate, futurist, public s ...

, Michael Vassar, Gary Wolf,

2010

The 2010 Singularity Summit took place in San Francisco ;Speakers Lance Becker,

Dennis Bray Dennis Bray is an active emeritus professor at University of Cambridge. His group is also part of the Oxford Centre for Integrative Systems Biology. After a first career in Neurobiology, working on cell growth and movement, Dennis Bray moved in C ...

, Ben Goertzel, David Hanson,

Demis Hassabis Demis Hassabis (born 27 July 1976) is a British artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur. In his early career he was a video game AI programmer and designer, and an expert player of board games. He is the chief executive officer and ...

Ellen Heber-Katz Ellen Heber-Katz is an American immunologist and regeneration biologist who works as a professor at Lankenau Institute for Medical Research (LIMR). She discovered that the Murphy Roths Large (MRL) mouse strain can regenerate wounds without scarri ...

, Shane Legg,

Brian Litt Brian Litt is a Professor of Neurology, Neurosurgery and Bioengineering at the Perelman School of Medicine and University of Pennsylvania. He is the former director of the Penn Epilepsy Center, and is director of the Center for Neuroengineering ...

, Steven Mann,

Ramez Naam Ramez Naam is an American technologist and science fiction writer. He is best known as the author of the ''Nexus'' Trilogy. His other books include ''The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet'' and ''More than Human: Embraci ...

, Irene Pepperberg,

James Randi James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928 – October 20, 2020) was a Canadian-American stage magician, author and scientific skeptic who extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Rodrigues 2010p. ...

, Terry Sejnowski, Mandayam Srinivasan,

Gregory Stock Gregory Stock is a biophysics, biophysicist, best-selling author, biotech entrepreneur, and the former director of the Program on Medicine, Technology and Society at UCLA’s School of Medicine. His interests lie in the scientific and evolutionar ...

John Tooby John Tooby (born 1952) is an American anthropologist, who, together with psychologist wife Leda Cosmides, helped pioneer the field of evolutionary psychology. Biography Tooby received his PhD in Biological Anthropology from Harvard University ...

Michael Vassar Michael may refer to: People * Michael (given name), a given name * Michael (surname), including a list of people with the surname Michael Given name "Michael" * Michael (archangel), ''first'' of God's archangels in the Jewish, Christian and ...

2011

The 2011 Singularity Summit took place in New York on October 15 and 16, 2011 ;Speakers Sonia Arrison, Stephen Badylak,

David Brin Glen David Brin (born October 6, 1950) is an American scientist and author of science fiction. He has won the Hugo,Dan Cerutti,

Tyler Cowen Tyler Cowen (; born January 21, 1962) is an American economist, columnist and blogger. He is a professor at George Mason University, where he holds the Holbert L. Harris chair in the economics department. He hosts the economics blog ''Marginal R ...

, Riley Crane, David Ferrucci, Dileep George, Dmitry Itskov, Ken Jennings,

Christof Koch Christof Koch ( ; born November 13, 1956) is a German-American neurophysiologist and computational neuroscientist best known for his work on the neural basis of consciousness. He is the president and chief scientist of the Allen Institute for Br ...

John Mauldin John is a common English name and surname: * John (given name) * John (surname) John may also refer to: New Testament Works * Gospel of John, a title often shortened to John * First Epistle of John, often shortened to 1 John * Seco ...

, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, James McLurkin,

, Jason Silva, Jaan Tallinn,

, Alexander Wissner-Gross,

2012

The 2012 Singularity Summit took place on October 13–14, at Nob Hill Masonic Center, San Francisco. ;Speakers Stuart Armstrong,

Linda Avey Linda Avey (née Bahnson) is an American biologist and entrepreneur. She is known for co-founding 23andMe, a consumer genetic data company. Early life Avey was born in 1960, in South Dakota, United States. She attended Augustana University, ...

, Laura Deming,

Julia Galef Julia Galef (; born July 4, 1983) is co-founder of the Center for Applied Rationality. She hosts ''Rationally Speaking'', the official podcast of New York City Skeptics, which she has done since its inception in 2010, sharing the show with co- ...

Temple Grandin Mary Temple Grandin (born August 29, 1947) is an American academic and animal behaviorist. She is a prominent proponent for the humane treatment of livestock for slaughter and the author of more than 60 scientific papers on animal behavior. Gra ...

Daniel Kahneman Daniel Kahneman (; he, דניאל כהנמן; born March 5, 1934) is an Israeli-American psychologist and economist notable for his work on the psychology of judgment and decision-making, as well as behavioral economics, for which he was awarde ...

, James Koppel,

Nathan Labenz Nathan or Natan may refer to: People * Nathan (given name), including a list of people and characters with this name * Nathan (surname) * Nathan (prophet), a person in the Hebrew Bible *Nathan (son of David), biblical figure, son of King David ...

Melanie Mitchell Melanie Mitchell is an American scientist. She is the Davis Professor of Complexity at the Santa Fe Institute. Her major work has been in the areas of analogical reasoning, complex systems, genetic algorithms and cellular automata, and her publi ...

, Luke Muehlhauser,

, Christopher Olah,

Steven Pinker Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind. P ...

, Noor Siddiqui, Jaan Tallinn,

, John Wilbanks,

Carl Zimmer Carl Zimmer (born 1966) is a popular science writer, blogger, columnist, and journalist who specializes in the topics of evolution, parasites, and heredity. The author of many books, he contributes science essays to publications such as ''The Ne ...

References

External links

Archived official websiteThe Singularity Summit at Stanford, 2006The Singularity Summit Australia, 2012The Singularity Summit Australia, 2011The Singularity Summit Australia, 2010
Technology conferences Recurring events established in 2006 2006 establishments in California

2006

2007

2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

References

Further reading

External links