cyborg

The Singularity Summit drew a wide range of people from around the globe. There were technology companies hoping to spread brand recognition, quasi-spiritual sojourners looking for a new clue to the secret of immortality, and serious academics interested in cutting edge in artificial intelligence.

We asked them if they're looking forward to the Singularity's hypothesized robot takeover.

Welcome to the main event.

At the end of a day filled with many interesting, thought provoking talks (and a few that gave me some much needed sleep), the audience at the Singularity Summit 2009 sat content but exhausted. After all, contemplating the future of humanity really takes it out of you.

Then came Kurzweil. He's the man everyone came to see, and they greeted him appropriately. After the standing ovation died down, the auditorium reached its quietest point yet, as the collected skeptics, crazies and disciples waited to hear from the first prophet of Singularity.

Even before Stephen Wolfram took the stage, he evoked the largest applause of the conference so far. As the creator of Mathematica and Wolfram Alpha, and author of A New Kind of Science, Wolfram stands almost as tall as Kurzweil himself in the eyes of the audience. His pronouncements carry more weight than most of the conference's other speakers, which is why I felt relieved when Wolfram disregarded worry about our extinction at the hands of sentient robots, and instead focused on a very different concept of what role AI will play in our future.

Since I got here, I've been wondering what exactly the Singularity's going to look like. How are we going to create artificial intelligence, and when we do, how are we going to integrate ourselves with this advanced technology? Luckily, NYU philosopher David Chalmers was there to break it all down.

Ray Kurzweil's concept of the Singularity rests on two axioms: that computers will become more intelligent than humans, and that humans and computers will merge, allowing us access to that increased thinking power. So it only makes sense to begin the conference with discussions of those two fundamental concepts. No one disputed the emergence of intelligence beyond our own, but they did give me plenty of reasons to worry about how that process might take place.

Ray Kurzweil wasn't like the other nice, Jewish boys he grew up with in Queens. While they were putting baseball cards in the spokes of their bikes, Ray was writing computer programs and shaking hands with the President. Now, those other kids from the neighborhood are doctors and lawyers, and Kurzweil is a techno-prophet whose book, The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, changed our discourse on technology with its bold predictions about the coming merger between man and machine.

Blindness is the most debilitating of sensory impairments, and also the most vexing to cure. Now, MIT scientists have created a new kind of retinal implant that might help reverse the effects of two common forms of blindness. Drawing on the same principles as the cochlear implants that help the deaf, this implant wouldn't restore vision, but could help the blind navigate through everyday situations.

In January, researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, told a stunned conference audience that they had managed to create a remote-controlled cyborg beetle by attaching a computer chip to the brain of a giant insect. Now, the paper explaining how they did it has been published in the journal Frontiers In Neuroscience, and they have released a video of the cyber-bug in action.

Do you live in a magical wardrobe where you constantly reread Edith Hamilton’s Mythology hoping one day to transform into a centaur? Thanks to artist Kim Graham, you can now strap on some robotic horse legs and live the fantasy.