The Singularity Summit was held at Stanford University on the 13th May: a gathering aiming to explore the contemporary ramifications of the Singularity Summit. There were three or four bloggers at the meeting, who provide a general consensus on the speakers and the audience reaction.
Mike Treder of Responsible Technology liveblogged the event. He concluded that the audience preferred the non-transhumanist speakers, with the most applause given to the "most reactionary speakers". the organisation of the summit was reasonable, but there is no consensus on the singularity or its appearance. Possibly this century?
Renee Blodgett was enthusiastic and got a splendid photo of Bill McKibben as a teleported ghost talking to the summit. Like Treder, she was unimpressed by McKibben's contribution, which appeared to rely upon platitudes more than skilled rebuttals to the claims of the singularitarians.
Dan Farber at ZDnet covered the event in depth and noted that the summit attracted an audience of a 1,000. Most of the talks were rehashing academic and popular arguments published elsewhere. The most interesting take, was from Hofstadter, who remains sceptical of the concept, accepts that it holds water, but wishes for further debate within the scientific community itself.
Hofstader proclaimed that he was less skeptical than those he discussed the topic with, but said that the ideas said in book marred by blurring with too much science fiction, calling it "wild beyond any speculation I am willing to accept."
"I see large a number of things that are partially true, blurry," Hofstader continued. "I can't put a finger on where it's wrong, but when multiply them together, you get down to small number…maybe 1 in 1000 of what Ray is talking about taking place."
"When listening to Ray, I feel like I am listening to one side of a divorce…I would like to hear serious scientist giving it a serious response. It's all to Ray's credit…he raised important issues. We are about to be transformed in incredible ways, and have to take these ideas seriously."
A successful summit, in terms of dissemination and the exchange of views. Let us hope that the outcome is further debate amongst scientists, philosophers and singularitarians.