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 artifi ...

. 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 e ...

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 F ...

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

San Francisco San Francisco (; Spanish for " 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 fourth most populous in California and 17th ...

, 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 Un ...

, 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 Co ...

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 Profes ...

Barney Pell Barney Pell (born March 18, 1968) is an American entrepreneur, angel investor and computer scientist. He was co-founder and CEO of Powerset, a pioneering natural language search startup, search strategist and architect for Microsoft's Bing searc ...

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 Stuff ...

Justin Rattner Justin R. Rattner is a retired Intel Senior Fellow, Corporate Vice President and former director of Intel Labs. Previously, he served as the corporation's Chief Technology Officer, where he was responsible for leading Intel's microprocessor, com ...

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 ''Reas ...

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 Anders Sandberg (born 11 July 1972) is a Swedish researcher, futurist and transhumanist. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at th ...

, 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 scienti ...

, 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 pseudoscientifi ...

. 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 Univers ...

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 c ...

Ben Goertzel Ben Goertzel is a cognitive scientist, artificial intelligence researcher, CEO and founder of SingularityNET, leader of the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society, and chair of Humanity+. He helped popularize the term 'artificial general inte ...

, Steve Omohundro, Hugo de Garis, Marcus Hutter,

Mark Pesce Mark D. Pesce ( ; born 1962) is an American-Australian author, researcher, engineer, futurist and teacher. Early life Pesce was born in Everett, Massachusetts in 1962. In September 1980, Pesce attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MI ...

Stelarc Stelarc (born Στέλιος Αρκαδίου ''Stelios Arcadiou'' in Limassol in 1946; legally changed his name in 1972) is a Cyprus-born Australian performance artist raised in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, whose works focus heavily on ...

and

Randal A. Koene Randal A. Koene a Dutch neuroscientist, neuroengineer, and co-founder of carboncopies.org, an outreach and road mapping organization for advancing Substrate-Independent Minds (SIM). Between 2008 and 2010, Koene was Director of the Department of ...

2006

The first Singularity Summit took place in 2006 at Stanford University. ;SpeakersMachine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) Singularity Summit Speakers: 2006 to 2012
/ref> Nick Bostrom, 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 of ...

K. Eric Drexler Kim Eric Drexler (born April 25, 1955) is an American engineer best known for studies of the potential of molecular nanotechnology (MNT), from the 1970s and 1980s. His 1991 doctoral thesis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology was revised and ...

, Tyler Emerson, Douglas Hofstadter,

, Bill McKibben, Max More,

Christine Peterson Christine Peterson is an American forecaster, and the co-founder of Foresight Institute. She is credited with suggesting the term "open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistrib ...

, John Smart,

2007

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

, Jamais Cascio, Tyler Emerson,

J. Storrs Hall John Storrs "Josh" Hall is involved in the field of molecular nanotechnology. He founded the sci.nanotech Usenet newsgroup and moderated it for ten years, and served as the founding chief scientist of Nanorex Inc. for two years. He has written s ...

, 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 t ...

, Stephen M. Omohundro,

, Christine L. Peterson, Paul Saffo,

, 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 ang ...

, 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 ...

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 __NOTOC__ Dharmendra S. Modha is an Indian American manager and lead researcher of the Cognitive Computing group at IBM Almaden Research Center. He is known for his pioneering works in Artificial Intelligence and Mind Simulation. In November 200 ...

, Bob Pisani,

, Nova Spivack,

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 Edward S. Boyden is an American neuroscientist at MIT. He is the Y. Eva Tan Professor in Neurotechnology, a faculty member in the MIT Media Lab and an associate member of the McGovern Institute for Brain Research. In 2018 he was named a Howard Hu ...

Gary Drescher Gary L. Drescher is a scientist in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), and author of multiple books on AI, including ''Made-Up Minds: A Constructivist Approach to Artificial Intelligence''. His book describes a theory of how a computer p ...

, Stuart Hameroff,

, Marcus Hutter, 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 '' Gui ...

, 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 w ...

, Anna Salamon,

, 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 Lance B. Becker is an American physician and academic, specializing in emergency medicine and treatment for cardiac arrest, currently at Northwell Health. He is the chairman of the department of emergency medicine at North Shore University Hospit ...

, Dennis Bray,

, 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,

Shane Legg Shane Legg is a machine learning research director and digital technology entrepreneur who did an AI-related postdoctoral fellowship at University College London's Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit, after doctoral work at the Istituto Da ...

, Brian Litt, 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 Irene Maxine Pepperberg (born April 1, 1949) is a scientist noted for her studies in animal cognition, particularly in relation to parrots. She has been a professor, researcher and/or lecturer at multiple universities, and she is currently a res ...

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

Terry Sejnowski Terrence Joseph Sejnowski (born 13 August 1947) is the Francis Crick Professor at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies where he directs the Computational Neurobiology Laboratory and is the director of the Crick-Jacobs center for theoretical ...

, Mandayam Srinivasan, Gregory Stock, John Tooby, Michael Vassar,

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 Dmitry Itskov (Russian: Дмитрий Ицков) is a Russian entrepreneur, billionaire and the founder of ''New Media Stars'', a web-based media company. He has made a reported £1bn from his Moscow-based news publishing company. Itskov is best ...

, 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 B ...

, John Mauldin, Sharon Bertsch McGrayne, James McLurkin,

, Jason Silva,

Jaan Tallinn Jaan Tallinn (born 14 February 1972) is an Estonian billionaire computer programmer and investor known for his participation in the development of Skype and file-sharing application FastTrack/ Kazaa. Jaan Tallinn is a leading figure in the field ...

Alexander Wissner-Gross Alexander D. Wissner-Gross is an American research scientist and entrepreneur. He is a fellow at the Institute for Applied Computational Science at Harvard University. Education At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he researched na ...

, Michael Vassar,

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,

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, James Koppel,

, Nathan Labenz,

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. ...

, Noor Siddiqui,

John Wilbanks John Wilbanks is the Senior Medical Director at Biogen, and formerly the Chief Commons Officer at Sage Bionetworks. Previously he was a Senior Fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and at FasterCures. He is known for his work on open sc ...

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