NASA, Google, Ray Kurzweil to Form Unaccredited University

Now comes Singularity University: See the recruitment video.

Ray Kurzweil is a Trustee of Singularity University, so you'll find his book mentioned again and again. The goal of the institution, as best as I can determine, is to supply buzzwords to executives and politicians so they can speak down to researchers, scientists and engineers.

 

My alter-ego wrote this on another board:

Here in Silicon Valley there's a not-very-flattering word for what Singularity University seems to be doing -- vaporware. It basically refers to Valley companies' annoying practice of announcing wonderful new products in a big wave of publicity long before the product is perfected. Sometimes the promised product never appears at all.

In Singularity University's case, its founding meeting was last September and its first curriculm meeting met last month. But it's already got the internet buzzin' and press-releases are flying in all directions.

It doesn't sound like they intend to offer degree programs, at least immediately. They are talking about short courses.

The two individuals most visibly associated with Singularity seem to be its Chancellor Ray Kutzweil and its Vice-Chancellor Peter Diamandis. Kurtzweil is a futurist author best know for his "singularity" idea. This is the claim that artificial intelligence will surpass human intelligence about 2050. Talk starts to turn quasi-religious at that point. Diamandis is the X-Prize guy.

I'm not sure how fully NASA endorses this, beyond leasing Singularity space at their research/educational park in Mountain View. This used to be Moffet Field Naval Air Station, which closed at the end of the Cold War. The Navy handed the huge facility over to adjacent NASA-Ames Research Center, which has been trying to fill it with research/educational tenants and make it self-supporting so as to pay the bills, while NASA uses the runways and hangers and stuff.

Here's the NASA press release:

http://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/news/releases/2009/09-11AR.html

Despite it looking suspiciously like geek-religion, some big name scientists and thinkers have signed on to the concept. Here's a UC Berkeley Physics Nobelist delivering a talk on the Singularity University idea in China:

http://www.ebeijing.gov.cn/feature_2/Noble_Forum_2008/Nobel_Laureates_VIP/t997728.htm

"Singularity University: Preparing Humanity for Accelerating Technological Change"

Speaker: Professor George F. Smoot

Several technologies are both accelerating their rate of development and converging in a way that will change society and human beings in an incredible manner...

There are a numerous routes converging toward an unprecedented rate of development and innovation, which promises to be a thrilling era that enriches humans on many levels and challenges humans to respond. The rate of innovation will be so great that human beings will need assistance and enhancements of these technologies to cope. Newly formed Singularity University aims to illuminate the path to our new future..."

It looks like Techno-Millenarianism to me, the expectation that technological change will accelerate until its rate-of-change rises off the charts, becoming an asymptotic singularity... at which point the heavens will open and the Kingdom will finally dawn. It's the perfect new-religion for Silicon Valley tech geeks, since it casts them as their artificial god's creators and the engines of man's salvation. (Or doom, they don't care very much about that distinction.)

If I wasn't convinced that this was just... vaporware... it would probably scare me to death.

 

Do you still stand by this opinion? Singularity University is receiving quite a bit of attention.