by cameron | May 31, 2007 | energy, energy debate, environment, science, singularity, technology
Didn’t expect THAT, did you?
I’m prepping for my chat with Vint tomorrow morning and happened upon this recent interview with Kuzweil on CNNMoney where he says:
“These slides that Gore puts up are ludicrous,” says the man who once delivered a tech conference presentation as a singing computer avatar named Ramona. (That stunt was the inspiration for the 2002 Al Pacino movie “Simone.”) “They don’t account for anything like the technological progress we’re going to experience.”
I guess he means that accelerating technological progress will allow us to generate power using fossil-fuel substitutes and undo the damage we’ve already done. He might be right. I hope he is. I still don’t think that means we should stop doing what we can do now to change our behaviours though.
By the way… I’ve got something VERY exciting in the works for TPN’s audience regarding carbon offsets. Stay tuned.
by cameron | May 21, 2007 | movies, science, science vs religion, singularity
The guys from the Singularity Institute are trying to get on the front page of Digg. Do me a favour and DIGG SIAI.
See also Eliezer’s new video interview.
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Remember Stan Relihan from episode #219? The LinkedIn guy? Well I’m excited to announce that he’s starting his own show on TPN! You may recall I half-jokingly set Stan a goal at the end of the show to use LinkedIn to get me a good guest for the show. Well he’s the guy that set up my interview with Vint Cerf. So we both agreed he proved his point. 🙂 We haven’t come up with a title for the show yet but it’s going to be around networking, using LinkedIn and Web2.0 tools but also how to network the old fashioned way. Strategies for getting the most out of your network. As networking is something I’ve never really been good at or comfortable with, I’m really excited about the show.
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Michael Lemonick over on Time’s site has a good article on ID vs Evolution. There’s some fiery debate in his comments. Michael’s post on the recent “dark matter” images is also good. Helped me start to get my head around what I’m looking at.
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Anyone know when GRINDHOUSE is opening here?? When I wrote this post on March 30th, according to YourMovies.com.au it was supposed to open on May 31st but it seems to have disappeared? I wonder if this has anything to do with the news that they are going to split the films up?
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OH MY ZEUS!! I just watched the most brilliant, amazing, mind-wrenchingly awesome film I have seen in eons – HARD CANDY. I’ve been hearing about this film since it hit the cinemas and most people told me “it’s hard to watch”. But I loved it. I haven’t been this excited about a film since… Fight Club. This is the best psychological thriller I have seen since DEATH & THE MAIDEN. I thought Ellen Page‘s performance was amazing. Although it’s pretty hard to pass her off as a 14 year old, even a “mature” 14 year old, she’s believable enough. But her performance was simply spellbinding. I can’t think of enough adjectives to describe this movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, get it out on DVD immediately. Do not pass GO, etc.
by cameron | May 17, 2007 | Podcast, science, singularity, technology, transhumanism
Forgive me Father – it’s been at least two weeks since my last podcast.
I figured you guys needed some time to digest my last run of shows. Ready for more yet?
Another show on the coming of the technological singularity today. My guest is Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder and research fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence in California.
I have been aware of Eli for ten years or more. He was featured fairly prominently in Damien Broderick’s book The Spike and was a contributor to Natasha Vita-More’s Extropian mailing list in the mid to late Nineties.
An autodidact prodigy, Eliezer wrote the first version of his Singularity “call to arms”, Staring Into The Singularity, at the age of 15 and has been re-working it continually since then.
On this episode I’ve tried to capture Eliezer’s vision for the different forms that the Singularity might take, the timelines for it, and his motivations for trying to make it happen as soon as possible.
I hope you enjoy it.
If you want to hear more interviews about The Singularity or AI, try these previous episodes of G’Day World:
Dr Aubrey de Grey
Ray Kurzweil
Roger Williams
Dr Ben Goertzel
by cameron | Sep 19, 2006 | singularity, Uncategorized
From the Mprize press release today:
Peter A. Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of online payments system PayPal, Founder and Managing Member of Clarium Capital Management, a San Francisco-based hedge fund, and angel investor in social networking site Facebook, has announced his pledge of $3.5 Million to support scientific research into the alleviation and eventual reversal of the debilities caused by aging, to be conducted under the auspices of the Methuselah Foundation, a charity co-founded and Chaired by Dr. Aubrey de Grey.
If you don’t know who Aubrey de Grey is, listen to my interview with him: G’Day World #42 – Dr Aubrey de Grey
Very exciting to see more entrepreneurs getting behind life extension research. If Gates and Buffett threw some of their Gigantor cash at it, it could probably get knocked over in ten or twenty years. By the way, Thiel is the same guy who co-produced THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. According to Wikipedia, he has also made early-stage investments in several companies, including Facebook, LinkedIn, Friendster, Rapleaf, and Ironport. In May 2006 he spoke at the Singularity Summit. I’ve got to get this guy on the show. How long do you think it will take me to get an intro?
by cameron | Aug 20, 2006 | Podcast, singularity
About
a week ago on this blog I mentioned that I’d just read an amazing book called “The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect” (aka MOPI). Today on the show I’m very excited to have the author of that book, Roger Williams. Roger talks to me from his home in New Orleans about the genesis of the book, why it has never been published, the sequel he’s writing, his other fiction, the Singularity, and what life is like in New Orleans 12 months after Hurricane Katrina.
Get MOPI here
Find Roger’s other fiction here
Read up on “The Singularity” and what others are saying about it
Listen to my interview with Ray Kurzweil from late 2005
Read up on Eliezer Yudkowsky who you’ll hear Roger mention a few times
