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Singularity University

It sounds a bit like a Futurama joke, but something actually called the “Singularity University” will open this summer. It’s backed by some heavy hitters, including Google, NASA, Ray Kurzweil, who actually popularized the term ‘Singularity’ with his book The Singularity is Near, Peter Diamandis, the CEO of the X-Prize Foundation, and other scientific luminaries. Here is a short introductory video explaining the principles and goals of the University:

The school is designed to bring together the brightest minds from a multiplicity of academic fields and provide an interdisciplinary framework to better understand (and bring about) the future of technology. Cost for the 9-week summer course is slated at $25,000; since it’s the first year, it’s hard to say how hard it will be to get accepted and how much they will give out in aid, though my guess is hard and little.

The curriculum follows 10 tracks:

* future studies and forecasting
* networks and computing systems
* biotechnology and bioinformatics
* nanotechnology
* medicine, neuroscience and human enhancement
* AI, robotics, and cognitive computing
* energy and ecological systems
* space and physical sciences
* policy, law and ethics
* finance and entrepreneurship

Though this is pretty exciting stuff, and I most definitely support its existence, it seems a bit of a misnomer to call it a “University;” it appears to be more of a business trade show/conference than a school. It’s also quite likely that people who are willing to shell out 25K on a summer course possess ulterior business motives and are piggybacking on nerds to sniff out the “next big thing” while establishing the proper Valley connections. Finally, based on current info, it looks like the SU will just be teaching interested parties about various Singularity-related academic topics, and not performing ANY actual research whatsoever. And isn’t the point of the Singularity that it will pretty much happen no matter what we do… that the seeds are sown, and barring some massive catastrophe that blasts us back to the Stone Age, we are just waiting for the trigger? Personally, I’ll be following the people at the trenches, who, for example, are working and thinking extremely hard on how to actually create a seed AI, rather than the “students” attending a glorified Google networking event.