Singularity Institute
Encyclopedia
The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI) is a non-profit organization
founded in 2000 to develop safe artificial intelligence
software, and to raise awareness of both the dangers and potential benefits it believes AI presents. The organization advocates ideas initially put forth by I. J. Good and Vernor Vinge
regarding an "intelligence explosion", or Singularity
, which is predicted to follow the creation of sufficiently advanced AI. In their view, the potential benefits and risks of this event necessitate the search for solutions to problems involving AI goal systems to ensure powerful AIs are not dangerous when they are created. The Singularity Institute espouses the Friendly AI model created by its co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky
as a potential solution to such problems.
Michael Vassar
serves as the organization's president, and inventor and futures studies author Ray Kurzweil serves as one of its directors. SIAI maintains an advisory board whose members include Oxford
philosopher Nick Bostrom
, biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey
, PayPal
co-founder Peter Thiel
, and Foresight Nanotech Institute co-founder Christine Peterson. The SIAI is tax exempt
under Section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code, and has a Canadian branch, SIAI-CA, formed in 2004 and recognized as a Charitable Organization by the Canada Revenue Agency
.
and Internet entrepreneurs Brian and Sabine Atkins. At first, SIAI operated primarily over the Internet, receiving financial contributions from transhumanists and futurists
. On July 23, 2001, SIAI launched the open source Flare Programming Language Project, described as an "annotative programming language" with features inspired by Python
, Java
, C++
, Eiffel
, Common Lisp
, Scheme, Perl
, Haskell
, and others. The specifications were designed with the complex challenges of seed AI
in mind. However, the effort is no longer active, as more focus was put on the problem of Friendly AI.
In 2002, SIAI published on its website the paper Levels of Organization in General Intelligence, a preprint of a book chapter later included in a compilation of general AI theories, entitled "Artificial General Intelligence" (Ben Goertzel
and Cassio Pennachin, eds.). Later that year, SIAI released their two main introductory pieces, "What is the Singularity" and "Why Work Toward the Singularity".
In 2003, the Singularity Institute appeared at the Foresight Senior Associates Gathering, where co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky
presented a talk titled "Foundations of Order". They also made an appearance at the Transvision 2003 conference at Yale University
with a talk by SIAI volunteer Michael Anissimov.
In 2004, SIAI released AsimovLaws.com, a website that examined AI morality in the context of the "I, Robot" movie starring Will Smith, released just two days later. From July to October, SIAI ran a Fellowship Challenge Grant that raised $35,000 over the course of three months. Early the next year, the Singularity Institute relocated from Atlanta, Georgia to Silicon Valley.
In February 2006, the Singularity Institute completed a $200,000 Singularity Challenge fundraising drive, in which every donation up to $100,000 was matched by Clarium Capital
President, Paypal Co-Founder and SIAI Advisor Peter Thiel
. The stated uses of the funds included hiring additional full-time staff, an additional full-time research fellow position, and the organization of the Singularity Summit
at Stanford.
In 2006, the Singularity Institute, along with the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford, the Center for Study of Language and Information, KurzweilAI.net, and Peter Thiel, co-sponsored the Singularity Summit
at Stanford. The summit took place on 13 May 2006 at Stanford University with Thiel moderating and 1300 in attendance. The keynote speaker was Ray Kurzweil, followed by eleven others: Nick Bostrom
, Cory Doctorow
, K. Eric Drexler
, Douglas Hofstadter
, Steve Jurvetson
, Bill McKibben
, Max More
, Christine Peterson, John Smart
, Sebastian Thrun
, and Eliezer Yudkowsky
.
The 2007 Singularity Summit
took place on September 8-September 9, 2007, at the Palace of Fine Arts
Theatre, San Francisco. A third Singularity Summit took place on October 25, 2008, at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose. The 2009 Singularity Summit took place on October 3, at the 92nd Street Y
in New York City, New York. The 2010 Summit was held on August 14–15, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.
Non-profit organization
Nonprofit organization is neither a legal nor technical definition but generally refers to an organization that uses surplus revenues to achieve its goals, rather than distributing them as profit or dividends...
founded in 2000 to develop safe artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
software, and to raise awareness of both the dangers and potential benefits it believes AI presents. The organization advocates ideas initially put forth by I. J. Good and Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge
Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep , A Deepness in the Sky , Rainbows End , Fast Times at Fairmont High ...
regarding an "intelligence explosion", or Singularity
Technological singularity
Technological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...
, which is predicted to follow the creation of sufficiently advanced AI. In their view, the potential benefits and risks of this event necessitate the search for solutions to problems involving AI goal systems to ensure powerful AIs are not dangerous when they are created. The Singularity Institute espouses the Friendly AI model created by its co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky is an American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence, living in Redwood City, California.- Biography :...
as a potential solution to such problems.
Michael Vassar
Michael Vassar
Michael Vassar is a futurist, activist, entrepreneur, and the president of the Singularity Institute. He advocates safe development of new technologies for the benefit of mankind. He has held positions with Aon, the Peace Corps, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology...
serves as the organization's president, and inventor and futures studies author Ray Kurzweil serves as one of its directors. SIAI maintains an advisory board whose members include Oxford
University of Oxford
The University of Oxford is a university located in Oxford, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest surviving university in the world and the oldest in the English-speaking world. Although its exact date of foundation is unclear, there is evidence of teaching as far back as 1096...
philosopher Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...
, biomedical gerontologist Aubrey de Grey
Aubrey de Grey
Aubrey David Nicholas Jasper de Grey is an English author and theoretician in the field of gerontology, and the Chief Science Officer of the SENS Foundation. He is editor-in-chief of the academic journal Rejuvenation Research, author of The Mitochondrial Free Radical Theory of Aging and co-author...
, PayPal
PayPal
PayPal is an American-based global e-commerce business allowing payments and money transfers to be made through the Internet. Online money transfers serve as electronic alternatives to paying with traditional paper methods, such as checks and money orders....
co-founder Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American business magnate, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. With Elon Musk and Max Levchin, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO...
, and Foresight Nanotech Institute co-founder Christine Peterson. The SIAI is tax exempt
Tax exemption
Various tax systems grant a tax exemption to certain organizations, persons, income, property or other items taxable under the system. Tax exemption may also refer to a personal allowance or specific monetary exemption which may be claimed by an individual to reduce taxable income under some...
under Section 501(c)(3) of the United States Internal Revenue Code, and has a Canadian branch, SIAI-CA, formed in 2004 and recognized as a Charitable Organization by the Canada Revenue Agency
Canada Revenue Agency
The Canada Revenue Agency is a federal agency that administers tax laws for the Government of Canada and for most provinces and territories, international trade legislation, and various social and economic benefit and incentive programs delivered through the tax system...
.
History
SIAI was founded in 2000 by AI researcher Eliezer YudkowskyEliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky is an American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence, living in Redwood City, California.- Biography :...
and Internet entrepreneurs Brian and Sabine Atkins. At first, SIAI operated primarily over the Internet, receiving financial contributions from transhumanists and futurists
Futurists
Futurists or futurologists are scientists and social scientists whose speciality is to attempt to systematically predict the future, whether that of human society in particular or of life on earth in general....
. On July 23, 2001, SIAI launched the open source Flare Programming Language Project, described as an "annotative programming language" with features inspired by Python
Python (programming language)
Python is a general-purpose, high-level programming language whose design philosophy emphasizes code readability. Python claims to "[combine] remarkable power with very clear syntax", and its standard library is large and comprehensive...
, Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, C++
C++
C++ is a statically typed, free-form, multi-paradigm, compiled, general-purpose programming language. It is regarded as an intermediate-level language, as it comprises a combination of both high-level and low-level language features. It was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup starting in 1979 at Bell...
, Eiffel
Eiffel (programming language)
Eiffel is an ISO-standardized, object-oriented programming language designed by Bertrand Meyer and Eiffel Software. The design of the language is closely connected with the Eiffel programming method...
, Common Lisp
Common Lisp
Common Lisp, commonly abbreviated CL, is a dialect of the Lisp programming language, published in ANSI standard document ANSI INCITS 226-1994 , . From the ANSI Common Lisp standard the Common Lisp HyperSpec has been derived for use with web browsers...
, Scheme, Perl
Perl
Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Perl was originally developed by Larry Wall in 1987 as a general-purpose Unix scripting language to make report processing easier. Since then, it has undergone many changes and revisions and become widely popular...
, Haskell
Haskell (programming language)
Haskell is a standardized, general-purpose purely functional programming language, with non-strict semantics and strong static typing. It is named after logician Haskell Curry. In Haskell, "a function is a first-class citizen" of the programming language. As a functional programming language, the...
, and others. The specifications were designed with the complex challenges of seed AI
Seed AI
Seed AI is a hypothesized type of strong artificial intelligence capable of recursive self-improvement. Having improved itself it would become better at improving itself, potentially leading to an exponential increase in intelligence...
in mind. However, the effort is no longer active, as more focus was put on the problem of Friendly AI.
In 2002, SIAI published on its website the paper Levels of Organization in General Intelligence, a preprint of a book chapter later included in a compilation of general AI theories, entitled "Artificial General Intelligence" (Ben Goertzel
Ben Goertzel
Ben Goertzel , is an American author and researcher in the field of artificial intelligence. He currently leads Novamente LLC, a privately held software company that attempts to develop a form of strong AI, which he calls "Artificial General Intelligence"...
and Cassio Pennachin, eds.). Later that year, SIAI released their two main introductory pieces, "What is the Singularity" and "Why Work Toward the Singularity".
In 2003, the Singularity Institute appeared at the Foresight Senior Associates Gathering, where co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky is an American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence, living in Redwood City, California.- Biography :...
presented a talk titled "Foundations of Order". They also made an appearance at the Transvision 2003 conference at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
with a talk by SIAI volunteer Michael Anissimov.
In 2004, SIAI released AsimovLaws.com, a website that examined AI morality in the context of the "I, Robot" movie starring Will Smith, released just two days later. From July to October, SIAI ran a Fellowship Challenge Grant that raised $35,000 over the course of three months. Early the next year, the Singularity Institute relocated from Atlanta, Georgia to Silicon Valley.
In February 2006, the Singularity Institute completed a $200,000 Singularity Challenge fundraising drive, in which every donation up to $100,000 was matched by Clarium Capital
Clarium Capital
Clarium Capital Management LLC is an American investment management and hedge fund company that pursues a global macro strategy, that Peter Thiel founded in San Francisco in 2002...
President, Paypal Co-Founder and SIAI Advisor Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel
Peter Andreas Thiel is an American business magnate, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager. With Elon Musk and Max Levchin, Thiel co-founded PayPal and was its CEO...
. The stated uses of the funds included hiring additional full-time staff, an additional full-time research fellow position, and the organization of the Singularity Summit
Singularity Summit
The Singularity Summit is the annual conference of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. It was started in 2006 at Stanford University by Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Peter Thiel, and the subsequent summits in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 have been held in San...
at Stanford.
In 2006, the Singularity Institute, along with the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford, the Center for Study of Language and Information, KurzweilAI.net, and Peter Thiel, co-sponsored the Singularity Summit
Singularity Summit
The Singularity Summit is the annual conference of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. It was started in 2006 at Stanford University by Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Peter Thiel, and the subsequent summits in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 have been held in San...
at Stanford. The summit took place on 13 May 2006 at Stanford University with Thiel moderating and 1300 in attendance. The keynote speaker was Ray Kurzweil, followed by eleven others: Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom
Nick Bostrom is a Swedish philosopher at the University of Oxford known for his work on existential risk and the anthropic principle. He holds a PhD from the London School of Economics...
, Cory Doctorow
Cory Doctorow
Cory Efram Doctorow is a Canadian-British blogger, journalist, and science fiction author who serves as co-editor of the blog Boing Boing. He is an activist in favour of liberalising copyright laws and a proponent of the Creative Commons organization, using some of their licences for his books...
, K. Eric Drexler
K. Eric Drexler
Dr. Kim Eric Drexler is an American engineer best known for popularizing the potential of molecular nanotechnology , from the 1970s and 1980s.His 1991 doctoral thesis at MIT was revised and published as...
, Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter
Douglas Richard Hofstadter is an American academic whose research focuses on consciousness, analogy-making, artistic creation, literary translation, and discovery in mathematics and physics...
, Steve Jurvetson
Steve Jurvetson
Steven T. "Steve" Jurvetson is a Managing Director of Draper Fisher Jurvetson . He was a Venture Capitalist investor in Hotmail, Interwoven, and Kana...
, Bill McKibben
Bill McKibben
William Ernest "Bill" McKibben is an American environmentalist, author, and journalist who has written extensively on the impact of global warming. He is the Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College...
, Max More
Max More
Max More is a philosopher and futurist who writes, speaks, and consults on advanced decision-making about emerging technologies....
, Christine Peterson, John Smart
John Smart (futurist)
John Smart is a futurist and scholar of accelerating change. He is founder and president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation, an organization that does “outreach, education, research, and advocacy with respect to issues of accelerating change.”. Smart has an MS in futures studies from the...
, Sebastian Thrun
Sebastian Thrun
Sebastian Thrun is a Research Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University and former director of the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory . He led the development of the robotic vehicle Stanley which won the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge, and which is exhibited in the Smithsonian...
, and Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Yudkowsky
Eliezer Shlomo Yudkowsky is an American artificial intelligence researcher concerned with the singularity and an advocate of friendly artificial intelligence, living in Redwood City, California.- Biography :...
.
The 2007 Singularity Summit
Singularity Summit
The Singularity Summit is the annual conference of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence. It was started in 2006 at Stanford University by Ray Kurzweil, Eliezer Yudkowsky, and Peter Thiel, and the subsequent summits in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011 have been held in San...
took place on September 8-September 9, 2007, at the Palace of Fine Arts
Palace of Fine Arts
The Palace of Fine Arts in the Marina District of San Francisco, California, is a monumental structure originally constructed for the 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in order to exhibit works of art presented there. One of only a few surviving structures from the Exposition, it is the only one still...
Theatre, San Francisco. A third Singularity Summit took place on October 25, 2008, at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose. The 2009 Singularity Summit took place on October 3, at the 92nd Street Y
92nd Street Y
92nd Street Y is a multifaceted cultural institution and community center located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City, United States, at the corner of E. 92nd Street and Lexington Avenue. Its full name is 92nd Street Young Men's and Young Women's Hebrew Association...
in New York City, New York. The 2010 Summit was held on August 14–15, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco.