Singularity University planned to tackle 'major challenges'

05.02.2009
In an attempt to bring together inquiring minds at the forefront of humanity's colliding technologies -- artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, robotics, biotech and bioinformatics -- X-Prize founder Peter Diamandis and inventor Ray Kurzweil have teamed up to create a school called Singularity University. The pair hope to meld the brightest minds from disparate technology and information fields during 10-week courses on how to bring about, and deal with, a world of ever-accelerating change.

Kurzweil told the Standard, "We're looking for students with insight and ideas in one field of accelerating information technology who are ready to connect to other fields and to apply the resulting synergies to tackle the major challenges facing humanity."

The school's core premise is that major problems such as global climate change, or goals such as increasing human lifespans, won't be met by simply extrapolating current trends and ongoing research. "The magic of breakthroughs occurs when you have nontraditional thinking around a problem that is stuck," Diamandis told BusinessWeek. "It's when a mathematician works on a biological problem."

The school is now accepting applications for a graduate program and an executive program this summer. The entry price for those admitted is steep: US$25,000 for ten weeks. Diamandis told CNET that partial and full scholarships will be available.

The initial class at Singularity University will be limited to 30 students, with plans to expand to 120. The faculty list includes Nobel Prize-winning physicist George Smoot, Google Internet evangelist Vint Cerf, and British gerontologist Aubrey de Grey. The school will be located at Nasa Research Park in Moffet Field, a former Navy airfield whose gigantic airship hangars from the 1930's still turn the heads of drivers on Highway 101 in California's Silicon Valley. Google's Mountain View campus is within walking distance.

The singularity after which the school is named is a hypothetical turning point in human society that Kurzweil believes is fewer than fifty years away. At that time, accelerating changes brought by technology will supposedly make it impossible to predict the future, even the near future, with any certainty at all. Kurzweil's 2005 book, The Singularity is Near, focused on the premise that human beings would "transcend biology" by using machines to remake our bodies, perhaps even uploading our consciences into machines instead of dying.