Singularity summit

Someone once said that the Singularity is like the Rapture for geeks :-)

Nevertheless, some of the talks from the recent Singularity Summit are interesting.

So far I've enjoyed Omohundro, Jurvetson and Thiel. (Respectively, a physicist turned computer scientist, an engineer turned venture capitalist, and a derivatives trader turned PayPal CEO turned hedge fund manager.) Omohundro argues that AI beings will be much more rational than we are, using game-theoretic ideas of Von Neumann. Jurvetson thinks that we'll use evolutionary algorithms to create AI. But the resulting beings will be so complex that, while we understand the process of their creation, we won't understand how they really work -- any more than we understand evolved biological beings. Thiel's talk about investing for the singularity is goofy, but the comments near the end about Buffet's positions are quite interesting. The talk by robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks is surprisingly lame. There are quite a few talks I haven't yet had time to listen to...