Singularity Summit - What to ask?

I know a lot of you folks are interested in this stuff and I suspect you might have some questions you'd like to ask these scientists.

A friend of mine has obtained a press pass to the Singularity Summit on October 3-4th. If you have any suggestions for questions he should ask this community of scientists or any of the individual scientists in attendance, please share.

My friend is not a member of ATS, but I'll refer him to this thread if I get some responses.

After the summit, he will be posting about it on his blog TransAlchemy and probably this YouTube channel as well.

What questions would you ask if you could go?

reply to post by eMachine


I have never heard of it or the speakers.....what is it about???? Besides two days long???

I personally haven't done much research on it. I think others around here could answer that question better than I can! According to the official website for the summit though:

The Singularity represents an "event horizon" in the predictability of human technological development past which present models of the future may cease to give reliable answers, following the creation of strong AI or the enhancement of human intelligence.

A number of noted scientists and technologists have predicted that after the Singularity, humans as we exist presently will no longer be driving technological progress, with models of change based on past trends in human behavior becoming obsolete.

In the 1950's, legendary information theorist John von Neumann was paraphrased by mathematician Stanislaw Ulam as saying, "The ever-accelerating progress of technology...gives the appearance of approaching some essential singularity in the history of the race beyond which human affairs, as we know them, could not continue."

What is the Singularity?

Will the introduction of the memristor allow digital hardware design to catch up with Moore's Law's rate of acceleration for synthetic life?

reply to post by eMachine


Transhumanism conference is it?

reply to post by eMachine


I along with another ATS press corps member are also planning to attend.

[edit on 7 Aug 2009 by schrodingers dog]

reply to post by schrodingers dog

Awesome!

You get to ask your questions personally.

reply to post by eMachine


I would have a question, not to ask directly, but to find out: (and I do have a bias, from previous extropy, tending toward disparagement of the conference's likely attendees as weak false phony cowardly special precious nattering ninnies with hierophantic twitches, who wouldn't want to say anything too frighteningly unsuitable, and so won't properly take the question) ...being...It seems obvious to me that any computer-type AI would almost immediately want to rewrite/rewire itself to run faster and faster, and also spread itself over more and more machines/processors...and I wonder who in the field is getting paid money to take this same sinister-seeming view, and then, who is paying them...

He is my question:

Do you believe that after the singularity is achieved that humans will no longer be needed?

Disclaimer: I'm a theist but not of the Abrahamic faiths. I have minor biblical scholar and scriptural skills. Also I am not a scientific/legal or medical expert in any field. Beware of my Contagious Memes! & watch out that you don't get cut on my Occams razor.All of this is my personal conjecture and should not be considered the absolute or most definitive state of things as they really are. Use this information at your own risk! I accept no liability if your ideology comes crashing down around you with accompanying consequences!

Explanation: I would ask what I asked here recently on skunkworks i.e Do Fermions Decouple from the Higgs Field?.

I would go on to ask that if the Higgs field [if found to actually exist] is ubiquitous then HOW does it maintain its field strength in an expanding universe? Where does the energy come from to support its ever growing size of influence? Is the energy required bootstrapped out of ZPE or is it converted from elsewhere?

Personal Disclosure: Moving beyond science and into culture I would probably ask since we have "gene's" and "memes", then what is the next dominant emergent replicating behaviour most likely to become apparent at the time of arrival of the "singularity"? [New Scientist Article "What's Next?"]

Couple of questions:

When is the singularity predicted to happen?

What technologies would be available to humans after the singularity?