1. 1 Accelerating to the Singularity Singularity University: Preparing Humanity for Accelerating Technological Change Founding Meeting September 20, 2008 Professor George F. Smoot University of California

2. 2 Von Neumann’s Singularity A technological singularity is a hypothetical event occurring when technological progress becomes so rapid that it makes the future after the singularity qualitatively different and harder to predict. technological progress Innovation: Society changing development In 1958, Stanisław Ulam wrote in a tribute to John von Neumann of a conversation centered on the ever accelerating progress of technology and changes in the mode of human life, “which 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.”Stanisław UlamJohn von Neumann The Paradigm Shift Rate is now doubling every decade. Implies Singularity is very near, within your lifetime Relevant time scale is the paradigm shift rate.

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9. 9 What is the Singularity? The time between major innovations decreases by large factors every innovation period. We are now at 10 year time scale. Next major scale is 1 year. After that is 1 month. After that 1 day, then 1 hour, then 1 sec. When it reaches 1 millisecond, this is beyond current human ability to register/comprehend. Enhanced abilities will be necessary.

10. 10 Singularity University founded to: Prepare Humanity for this accelerating technological change Connect present and future leaders and innovators to these accelerating, transformational and convergent technologies Find a path that allows this process to develop in a way that benefits and improves the welfare of humanity - new heights of intelligent wisdom, material (economic) progress, and longevity illuminate the path to our new future.

11. 11 Courses Graduate and Postgraduate level Masters Degrees C-Level (e.g. CEOs, CFOs, etc.) –3 day course –10 day course

12. 12 Main Program Offerings M.Sc. in singularity technology studies (MSS) 12 Months on Campus -Scientists, engineers - Technical Management M.Sc. In Singularity management (MSM) 12 Months at Campus- Business, policy - Project/Business Management interest Singularity Studies Program (SSP) 9 weeks in worldwide rotation (during summer break) - Young professionals - Hi-potentials Singularity Management Institute (SMI) 1 week in worldwide rotation moving with SSP - Middle management in tech sector with tech background and experience Executive Course (ESC) 1 week on Campus- Middle management in tech sector with legal/finance/marketing background

13. 13 Singularity Studies Program (SSP)

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15. 15 What about saturation of a technology? Exponential growth ends in saturation. The famous S-curve.

16. 16 Information Technologies (of all kinds) double their power (price performance, capacity, bandwidth) every year

17. 17 Measure MIT’s IBM 7094 Notebook Circa 2003 Year Processor Speed (MIPS) Main Memory (K Bytes) Approximate Cost (2003 $) 1967 0.25 144 $11,000,000 2003 1,000 256,000 $2,000 24 Doublings of Price-Performance in 36 years, doubling time: 18 months not including vastly greater RAM memory, disk storage, instruction set, etc. A Personal Experience

18. 18 Moore’s Law is one example of many….

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27. 27 The Biotechnology revolution: the intersection of biology with information technology

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30. 30 Every form of communications technology is doubling price-performance, bandwidth, capacity every 12 months

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36. 36 Miniaturization: another exponential trend

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38. 38 Planetary Gear

39. 39 Nanosystems bearing

40. 40 Nanosystems smaller bearing

41. 41 Respirocytes with Red Cells Copyright Vik Olliver, vik@asi.org.

42. 42 Copyright 2001, Lawrence Fields, Jillian Rose, and Phlesch Bubble Productions. Animation of a respirocyte releasing oxygen in a capillary

43. 43 copyright Zyvex (Katherine Green) Microbivores II

44. 44 Recent Milestones  2008 Computer as intelligent as a Mouse  2009 Computer as intelligent as a Rat  2010 Computer as intelligent as a Cat Scientists, at IBM Research � Almaden, in collaboration with colleagues from Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, have performed the first near real-time cortical simulation of the brain that exceeds the scale of a cat cortex and contains 1 billion spiking neurons and 10 trillion individual learning synapses.

45. 45 The Singularity is Near by

46. 46 Reverse Engineering the Brain: the ultimate source of the first templates of intelligence How do we find a source for wisdom?

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50. 50 Gathering data from multiple studies, Javier F. Medina, Michael D. Mauk, and their colleagues at the University of Texas Medical School devised a detailed bottom- up simulation of the cerebellum. Their simulation includes over 10,000 simulated neurons and 300,000 synapses, and includes all of the principal types of cerebellum cells. The Cerebellum

51. 51 Beginning of Connection Mapping 3D reconstruction of projection fibers in a human brain. Fibers were reconstructed from a DTI dataset with 2.2mm isotropic resolution. The cortical-brainstem connections are shown in light blue color and a subset of fibers that connect the motor cortex and the pyramidal tracts in the caudal pons level are painted white. Red purple, red and blue purple indicate anterior, superior, and posterior thalamic radiations. The light green, green, and yellow structures are globus pallidus, caudate, and thalamus. Ventricles are shown in gray.

52. 52 Mapping the Connections down to the individual neurons

53. 53 The Law of Accelerating Returns is driving economic growth The portion of a product or service’s value comprised of information is asymptoting to 100% The cost of information at every level incurs deflation at ~ 50% per year This is a powerful deflationary force –Completely different from the deflation in the 1929 Depression (collapse of consumer confidence & money supply)

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58. 58 Solar Energy Emerging nanotechnology will accelerate progress of cost of solar panels and storage – fuel cells Tipping point (cost per watt less than oil and coal) expected within 5 years Progress on thermo-solar Doubling time for watts from solar < 2 years –We are less than 10 doublings from meeting 100% of the world’s energy needs

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67. 67 What does this imply ? We live in an accelerating world. Increasingly rapid changes are ahead. Many are roughly predictable but some real surprises World is global and flat now and it is getting increasingly obvious Demographics have major implications Technology developments even more

68. 68 Machines are rapidly improving in pattern recognition Progress will be accelerated now that we have the tools to reverse engineer the brain Human pattern recognition is limited to certain types of patterns (faces, speech sounds, etc.) Machines can apply pattern recognition to any type of pattern Humans are limited to a couple dozen variables, machines can consider thousands simultaneously Contemporary Examples of Self-organizing systems

69. 69 2010: Computers begin to disappear Tablets and phones and then Images written directly to our retinas Ubiquitous high bandwidth connection to the Internet at all times Electronics so tiny it’s embedded in the environment, our clothing, our eyeglasses Full immersion visual-auditory virtual reality Augmented real reality Interaction with virtual personalities as a primary interface (They also do our research and other work with little guidance.) Effective language technologies

70. 70 2029: An intimate merger $1,000 of computation = 1,000 times the human brain Reverse engineering of the human brain completed Computers pass the Turing test Nonbiological intelligence combines –the subtlety and pattern recognition strength of human intelligence, with –the speed, memory, and knowledge sharing of machine intelligence Nonbiological intelligence will continue to grow exponentially whereas biological intelligence is effectively fixed

71. 71 Nanobots provide… Neural implants that are: –Noninvasive, surgery-free –Distributed to millions or billions of points in the brain Full-immersion virtual reality incorporating all of the senses –You can be someone else –“Experience Beamers” Expansion of human intelligence –Multiply our 100 trillion connections many fold –Intimate connection to diverse forms of nonbiological intelligence

72. 72 Average Life Expectancy (Years) Cro Magnon18 Ancient Egypt25 1400 Europe30 1800 Europe & U.S. 37 1900 U.S.48 2002 U.S.78 2010150 PDF and priors mean if you are older, you are likely to live longer because of childhood mortality. Now can expect to live longer because of technical advances (double-edged sword).