Transhumanists Should Attend Singularity University
If you’re in any leadership position, interested in the future of technology, want to network with the top executives, live forever, upload your mind into a machine and see an exclusive glimpse of the future of technology, you must attend a Singularity University conference or program.
Why you ask?
In this last year, I’ve attended two Singularity University conferences. If you didn’t attend Futuremed at the Hotel Del Cornonado, you missed out on a glimpse of the largest technologies disrupting your field in front of your own very two eyes. Moreover, if you didn’t attend last week’s Executive program at NASA AMES at Moffett Field California, you missed networking with some of the top executives, site visits and also missed out on a glimpse of companies disrupting every industry you are involved in.
First of anyone who reads anything from H+ Magazine knows that technology improves exponentially and that the one field being disrupted beyond recognition over the next 20 years is health and medicine. Ideas that were once only within the realm of science fiction are quickly becoming science fact.
Case in point, many doctors still today are unaware of the fact that you can do an entire physical on a smartphone. Take my friend Dr. Daniel Kraft, a Stanford and Harvard trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator. With over 20 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and healthcare innovation, Kraft has chaired the Medicine Track for Singularity University since SU’s inception, and founded and is Executive Director of Exponential Medicine, a program that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare. Who He also demonstrated one of the most powerful presentations on the future of healthcare and medicine that will disrupt the trillion dollar healthcare industry across the world. Devices including the Scanadu Scout, which basically empower individuals to do a myriad of diagnostic measurements on the human body that would typically require a doctor’s visit.
Now imagine offering all these technologies to every doctor in the developing world so that they have access to the best technologies simply from their smartphone.
Most doctors haven’t kept up to date with the latest technologies, and you will be irrelevant in the future as a doctor if you don’t keep up to date with the latest technologies.
In fact there is even an app coming that uses technology similar to IBM Watson for the Google Glass to help doctors receive evidence based medicine answers to queries, like “Okay glass I have a 42 year old women with X…Y…and Z problems and then the Google Glass will offer evidence based answers for doctors. Essentially Google glass will become the best Doctor in the world.
Moreover, there are now telepresence robots which can bring the best doctors to remotely monitor patients and even do rounds from anywhere in the world. Robots like the Suitable Technologies Beam telepresence robot can be used by doctors to offer telemedicine in poor countries if need be.
This gets me wondering if you’re in the medical field and not making use of these technologies how much are your patients missing out? Are you making the best diagnostics? Also if you run a hospital why aren’t physicians remotely monitoring patients for the best outcomes?
Ray Kurzweil, Dr. Daniel Kraft, Dr. Peter Diamandis and Rob Nail will give talks that will blow your mind, teach you to pay attention to exponential technologies and offer strategies to make millions and billions and change the world and the people you meet will empower you have connections to do just about anything you want in the medical field and stretch your thinking about how much medicine is changing.
I think some doctors will be replaced with AI and robotics in the future. I also predict that some doctors will merge with the machines using Google Glass and robotic telepresence to augment their knowledge and skills.
During this latest Executive program at Moffett Field at NASA AMES, the HQ for Singularity University, we were treated to some amazing presentations by some of the top industry executives and leaders in a myriad of various fields of AI, Robotics, medicine, and so forth. People like Brad Templeton who has been a consultant on Google’s team designing a driverless car and who lectures and blogs about the emerging technology of automated transportation. We really got to understand how AI and driverless cars and transport would really become a trillion dollar industry and disrupt the entire transport ecosystem. For instance, insights like automated free charging, self-driving Tesla cars as Taxi’s would profoundly change the landscape of cities today. Imagine how cheap transport would be with free charging, driverless cars. He said yes the costs of the cars may be initially high, but the cost of running them for 10 years would be close to zero except maybe tire changes.
The next amazing thing about attending an Executive Program is the intimacy of the whole event with all the faculty and attendees. I mean on the first day I got to hangout and chat with my old friend Salim Ismail, who spent two years as SU’s founding Executive Director and currently serves as its Global Ambassador focusing on its global presence. We got to speak about his latest book he’s working on and the insights he’s gained over the years of meeting great people to write such a work. Moreover, my favorite speaker and friend Rob Nail, CEO and Associate founder of Singularity University, who does one of the best talks at SU and beforehand I got a chance to chat with him about impacting a billion people and scaling robotics and humanoids, surrogates and AI’s to billions of people. I love chatting with Rob as he’s a visionary who inspires me to think bigger about my passion and has taught me a lot through his talks about the beauty of life, his newborn child and how this is something to remember when thinking about robotics. In some ways Rob Nail humanizes robots to the masses and has a magical way of conveying that ideology that I’ve only seen elsewhere among the Japanese.
Finally, in the day I got to have lunch with the VP of Sony and Neil Jacobstein who just finished his talk on AI and machine intelligence and how they will work very soon. It was absolutely amazing we get the opportunity to ask anything you want to know about Neural networks, the connectome projects, and Neuro-inspired computing and how it’s already being implemented and how this field is already running entire industries. Insights like how IBM Watson and Google and Nuance will have technologies so advanced in the next two years that entire call centers can be replaced with human like AI based conversational bots you will speak with over the phone. In fact, these support assistants will not only be indistinguishable from their human counterparts but even better in every aspect and have instant access to all the relevant information they need to settle a bill, medical claim or offer tech support using evidence and knowledge. Imagine hundreds of thousands of call center workers being displaced. If you’re a technology executive you need to prepare to downsize very soon or loose out to inefficiency. As anyone who’s waited knows waiting for 30 minutes on hold is just stupid in today’s technological environment.
This latest executive program I attended was a huge privilege for me. This was the one conference that literally blew my mind every day I attended. I made so many connections and networked with many people to help grow my company and app and was inspired to think bigger and inspired to start even larger companies. I mean the last conference I attended in November my startupwww.circlepluspayments.com even raised 500k seed funding. How much better does a conference get in added value than that. You meet great people but also learn to raise money and network with genuine people who want to be here and change the world and brainwashed to do so! So I mean you never know who you will meet and how they will inspire and help you. So this time I got to attend to build my network, get inspired on really how to push the bar and change my company and help other larger corporations do bigger things.
Good thing is they are opening a lot more programs to attend and which I will most likely at some point attend a few more as well to cover. They include the Graduate studies in the summer and the upcoming Executive program offered a few times a year which according to their website is described as below:
Singularity University’s Executive Program (EP) informs, educates, and prepares executives to recognize the growth opportunities and disruptive influences of exponentially growing technologies and how these key fields can affect their careers, companies, and industries in the years to come. The Executive Program is offered in a 7-day program, and also private, custom designed programs for decision-makers, strategists, CEOs, CTOs, entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, and government leaders – anyone thinking about or planning for how future technologies will affect their companies and their industries. Learn more and apply here: singularityu.org/ep
Here’s what Peter Diamandis has to say about why you should attend SU and the FutureMed conference.
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