Singularity University – Exponential Advancements in Humanity?

Even in the midst of downturn, developments like these keep USA on the fringe of innovations and breakthroughs. I’m intrigued that there are people out there willing to take such leaps of faith to start something like that, to bring “sci-fi” into reality sort of. Very niche, very forward looking.

The Singularity University was recently announced at the TED conference this week. It is established based on Ray Kurzweil’s futuristic The Singularity is Near – a very non-mainstream ‘forecast’ on AI, robotics and what future human life would be like. The SU is sponsored by wealthy individuals who support scientific breakthroughs (X-Prize, Google, VCs etc), and had a founding conference comprising who’s-who luminaries in the futuring and ‘extension of humanity and technology’ fields. SU aims to bring together graduate students working in different fields, to look at same problems from different lenses for new breakthroughs. Eg. Nanotech student gets expert briefings in futures studies & finance etc amongst 10 disciplines. Faculty includes science celebrities, and students are also expected to pitch ideas to nearby VCs for funding. SU is located in one of NASA’s research centres in Silicon Valley.

See too, recent Business Week article on this.