AP: Techies Ponder Computers Smarter Than Us.

The Singularity Summit is under way at Stanford. If yesterday's human hybrids involved cows, these involve machines.

What's a Singularity? The Institute's current definition is dense. I prefer the definition they offered in 2005, which I blogged then:

What is the Singularity? Sometime in the next few years or decades, humanity will become capable of surpassing the upper limit on intelligence that has held since the rise of the human species. We will become capable of technologically creating smarter-than-human intelligence, perhaps through enhancement of the human brain, direct links between computers and the brain, or Artificial Intelligence. This event is called the "Singularity" by analogy with the singularity at the center of a black hole -- just as our current model of physics breaks down when it attempts to describe the center of a black hole, our model of the future breaks down once the future contains smarter-than-human minds. Since technology is the product of cognition, the Singularity is an effect that snowballs once it occurs -- the first smart minds can create smarter minds, and smarter minds can produce still smarter minds.

Singularity Summit predicts new type of human

There's lot of coverage, including How to Invest in the Singularity,

It sounds uncomfortably like The Borg, but in a way that's what the Web is, the hive mind.. We upload ourselves to it in small increments.

Proto-blogger Jorn Barger of Robot Wisdom is linking simply to the Google stream on the "Singularity Summit," but you might find a voice that works for you in the News reports on the event. Browse what grabs you.

If the future interests you, this may be important.