Singularity Institute - History

History

The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence was founded in 2000 by AI researcher Eliezer Yudkowsky and Internet entrepreneurs Brian and Sabine Atkins. At first, it operated primarily over the Internet, receiving financial contributions from transhumanists and futurists.

In 2002, it published on its website the paper Levels of Organization in General Intelligence, a preprint of a book chapter later included in a compilation of general AI theories, entitled "Artificial General Intelligence" (Ben Goertzel and Cassio Pennachin, eds.). Later that year, it released their two main introductory pieces, "What is the Singularity" and "Why Work Toward the Singularity".

In 2003, the Singularity Institute appeared at the Foresight Senior Associates Gathering, where co-founder Eliezer Yudkowsky presented a talk titled "Foundations of Order". They also made an appearance at the Transvision 2003 conference at Yale University with a talk by institute volunteer Michael Anissimov.

In 2004, it released AsimovLaws.com, a website that examined AI morality in the context of the "I, Robot" movie starring Will Smith, released just two days later. From July to October, the institute ran a Fellowship Challenge Grant that raised $35,000 over the course of three months. Early the next year, the Singularity Institute relocated from Atlanta, Georgia to Silicon Valley.

In February 2006, the Singularity Institute completed a $200,000 Singularity Challenge fundraising drive, in which every donation up to $100,000 was matched by Clarium Capital President, Paypal Co-Founder and Singularity Institute Advisor Peter Thiel. The stated uses of the funds included hiring additional full-time staff, an additional full-time research fellow position, and the organization of the Singularity Summit at Stanford.

In 2006, the Singularity Institute, along with the Symbolic Systems Program at Stanford, the Center for Study of Language and Information, KurzweilAI.net, and Peter Thiel, co-sponsored the Singularity Summit at Stanford. The summit took place on 13 May 2006 at Stanford University with Thiel moderating and 1300 in attendance. The keynote speaker was Ray Kurzweil, followed by eleven others: Nick Bostrom, Cory Doctorow, K. Eric Drexler, Douglas Hofstadter, Steve Jurvetson, Bill McKibben, Max More, Christine Peterson, John Smart, Sebastian Thrun, and Eliezer Yudkowsky.

The 2007 Singularity Summit took place on September 8-September 9, 2007, at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre, San Francisco. A third Singularity Summit took place on October 25, 2008, at the Montgomery Theater in San Jose. The 2009 Singularity Summit took place on October 3, at the 92nd Street Y in New York City, New York. The 2010 Summit was held on August 14–15, 2010, at the Hyatt Regency in San Francisco. The 2011 Summit was held October 16–17, 2011, at the 92nd St. Y in New York. The 2012 Singularity Summit was on the weekend of October 13-14 at the Nob Hill Masonic Center, 1111 California Street, San Francisco, CA.

From 2009-2012, the Singularity Institute released about a dozen papers on subjects including machine ethics, economic implications of AI, and decision theory topics.