2016 Event Highlights

Singularity University Global Summit 2016 was the first event of its kind: a brand new flagship Summit for SU, and the largest single gathering of the SU community. The 2017 iteration will be even bigger, more bold, and more impactful. Until then, take a look at videos, session recaps and photos from 2016 to get an idea of the community and content that makes this event so special.

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Machine learning and AI will disrupt every industry in the near future. We’ll see big improvements in a machine’s ability to learn like a human, which will allow AI to surpass people at many work-related tasks. This will bring about major societal change.

“We are going to have true symbiosis between machine and human intelligence.”

– Neil Jacobstein

“Every physical task will be an opportunity for robotics.”

– Rob Nail

Open-source platforms and new materials are democratizing robotics. Robots will soon be coupled with AI to bring life to computers to handle much of our daily lives. The next step will be to make them safe enough for human interaction.

Virtual and augmented reality are growing in adoption and sophistication. VR will throw users into new and exciting worlds for education, entertainment and work, while AR could bring a more natural interface to computing.

“We’re erasing the boundaries between the real and virtual work and play spaces.”

– Philip Lelyveld

“Blockchains are a form of trust-making technology.”

– Melanie Swan

Blockchain technology enables a whole new era, involving value transfer and information exchange. All forms of property, money, and assets could be transacted with blockchains in the future, impacting entire industries such as mortgage servicing and electronic medical records. More broadly, blockchains suggest new and more flexible models for large-scale coordination.

Biology, genetics, medicine, and agriculture are applying new technologies to life itself, and impacting all of us in the process. We’re approaching the point at which we’re actually able to decode the building blocks of life, and know what it takes to create a human being.

Genetic engineering is now starting to look like software engineering.”

– Raymond McCauley

“With nanotech, you can have shape-changing materials.”

– Christine Peterson

Technological advances are tackling the nanotech challenge by miniaturizing from the top down and building atomically-precise structures from the bottom up. As these approaches converge, huge gains will be seen in areas from medicine and manufacturing to energy and space.