Singularity University Keeps On Acquiring

Thursday, December 6, 2012

Singularity University Acquires Singularity Summit
 
Singularity University
Singularity University announced today that it has acquired the Singularity Summit, the premier annual conference focused on Artificial Intelligence, from the Singularity Institute as well as the rights to the name Singularity Institute.  
The Singularity University announced today that it has acquired the Singularity Summit, the premier annual conference focused on Artificial Intelligence, founded by the Singularity Institute (SI) in 2006.  Occurring just days after the takeover of the popular Singularity Hub website, the move represents the effort of the organization to merge the various Singularity brands and activities.

According to the press release, the acquisition furthers SU’s founding goal to provide the tools and thinking necessary to solve humanity’s greatest challenges, while SI transitions to a more research-focused organization. It also enables SU to broaden its global offerings to include an expanded Summit, designed around the tracks of study currently offered at SU: AI and Robotics, Energy & Environmental Systems; Biotechnology and Bioinformatics; Medicine & Neuroscience; Networks and Computing, Nanotechnology, Entrepreneurship, and Design.

“The mission of Singularity University is to equip leaders with awareness about the disruptive implications and opportunities of accelerating technologies and to help empower them to become high-impact innovators,“ said CEO Rob Nail. “Our acquisition of the Singularity Summit will be a valuable asset as we continue to enrich our educational content and innovation pipeline, and expand our global network. We are also proud to support ongoing serious research on the implications of AI for which SI is well respected.”

As part of the agreement, Singularity University will also acquire the Singularity Institute brand, including the singularity.org domain. The current Singularity Institute organization will continue operations under a new brand to be determined, and will remain as co-producers of the Singularity Summit in some succeeding years.

“The meaning of the word ‘Singularity’ has broadened since the Singularity Institute was founded in 2000 to investigate the science and ethics of self-improving artificial intelligence,” said Luke Muehlhauser, Executive Director of the Singularity Institute. “We are pleased that we can transition the popular Singularity Summit conference to an organization with a strong commitment to maintaining its quality as it grows. The funding we receive from SU will in turn help us grow our own technical research program — in fact, we are looking to hire mathematicians and theoretical computer scientists. We will also change our name so that there is no future confusion about the identity of the two organizations.”

Founded in 2006 by Ray Kurzweil, and Peter Thiel, co-founder of Paypal and a leading thinker and venture capitalist in Silicon Valley, The Singularity Summit has been an inspiration and great source of ideas for us at 33rd Square, and we wish them and the new Singularity Institute continued success.

SOURCE  Singularity University


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