Leadership Foundation

The Singularity University

What is the vision of the Singularity University?
People today have an opportunity to connect together and work on projects which even ten or twenty years ago would have seemed impossible to tackle. The sorts of global challenges we’re facing need international interdisciplinary teams working on them. We want to provide a place where people can meet with others and find new approaches and ways to increase their impact.

In a world of experts and narrow specialisation, we want people to be comfortable saying I don’t know that much about your specific area but it resonates with what I do and I think maybe I can help. But to get to that point a common vocabulary is essential, which is what students develop in the first half of our program.

Could you say a bit about the curriculum?
The first five weeks is an intensive set of lectures and workshops which everybody takes together. They gain an introduction from experts about what’s going on in different technologies – say, biotechnology or robotics – but also go into finance and economics and policy and ethics.

In the second five weeks students are divided into different tracks (there are six tracks: Biotechnology and Bioinformatics, Artificial Intelligence and Robotics, Energy and Environmental Systems, Medicine and Neuroscience, Networks and Computer Systems, and Nano-technology) and they work together in teams of four to come up with solutions to particular challenges.

So the shift is from understanding the problem areas towards looking at solution spaces.

Is the intention that when they leave the program they will actually start these projects in the real world?
We ask them to come up with ideas that are viable, to develop proof of concept. We certainly hope that some of them go on to start them up, and we have an incubator which they can work with do to that, but it isn’t always best to start them right away. It may be that some ideas have arisen in the process that they want to combine with what they’re already doing, for example, or that they are busy with their current work but will come back to it.

Is there a critical component included in the curriculum?
Yes, we want people to look at future risks and also risks in changes that are happening today. For example, we brought in an (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) MIT economist who warns about how technologies are radically changing employment prospects. We also have people come in who have worked on specific projects and want them to go into details of what the critical failure points were. Of course, we are at the heart of Silicon Valley and so there is a “can do” attitude in relation to technology, but if for example one speaker was saying “this is how things are” they wouldn’t be able to get away with it.

What is the biggest thing that students gain from the experience?
I think it’s the ability to feel comfortable talking and working with people in a multitude of different fields. They come in with an area of expertise and we help them to think about what analogous changes are happening in other fields, and to think about what new set of tools they might be able to put together working collaboratively.

What are the qualities you look for in students?
There really isn’t any one thing we can say about our participants. For example, in the 2013 group we had students from 31 different countries and a varied set of backgrounds – architects, veterinarians, artificial intelligence and mathematics researchers, entrepreneurs. But our students are all hard-working, tenacious and interested in global challenges.

How did you manage to attract high quality students and faculty in the beginning?
When we were building it up in 2008-9 we had already put together the faculty team. Star faculty were then able to attract people and spread the word on the basis of their expertise. When it was announced we also did a public launch at TED.

In the beginning a lot of our students came from articles and press. Now alumni are a large part of it.

Final question, is the Singularity near?
It always is…

^{Photograph of Kathryn Myronuk by Evan Kafka/Glasshouse Assignment
Photograph by Michael Lutch. Courtesy of Kurzweil Technologies, Inc}