Stanford conference ponders world with machines more powerful than their creators

“Is technology poised to develop machines that can outsmart their human creators”, asks Tom Abate in the San Francisco Chronicle. “What will happen to mere mortals if such superintelligent machines arise?”

These will be among the questions pondered when experts in artificial intelligence, brain research and other futuristic fields gather at Stanford University on Saturday for what is being called the Singularity Summit.

“Borrowing a term from physics, singularity suggests a horizon beyond which we can’t see. It describes the point at which some form of intelligence spawned by technology gains the ability to rapidly improve its own programming — becoming so powerful that we cannot predict what it might do. At that point, its capabilities could exceed even the power of our imaginations.”

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– Listen to Tom Abate’s interview with Ray Kurzweil