Silicon Valley's Singularity University Is Cutting Staff, CEO Exits (bloomberg.com) 47
Singularity University, a Silicon Valley institute offering education on futurism, is reckoning with its own uncertain future. The chief executive officer is stepping down, and the organization plans to eliminate staff. From a report: The changes were outlined in an email Tuesday reviewed by Bloomberg that was sent to faculty by Erik Anderson, the executive chairman. They mark an extended decline for the company, which has in recent years lost an annual grant from Google and faced allegations of sexual assault, embezzlement and discrimination. Rob Nail, who ran Singularity for the last eight years, is leaving to pursue new career opportunities, Anderson wrote in the email. Singularity is conducting a CEO search, said a spokesman. The announcement of job cuts was made in line with U.S. labor law, which requires 60-day notice for companies with more than 100 employees, the spokesman said. Singularity declined to specify how many jobs would be affected, but a person familiar with the matter put the total at about 60. This person said many of those workers were informed of the news while attending a Singularity summit in Athens that ended Tuesday. Singularity, which takes its name from the notion that humans will someday merge with machines, was introduced in 2009 during a TED Talk by futurist Ray Kurzweil. The group operates for profit but with a mandate for social responsibility. Many alumni of its programs credit the organization with teaching them about cutting-edge concepts and helping them think more expansively.
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But I also wonder why this is a comment thread on an article about Singularity University. Does every single topic have to be turned to a discussion of goddamn politics?
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I agree that this is an odd place for a political comment about impeachment. But to answer your question all you need to do is look at the timing. The dems know they won't truly succeed, but this helps to tarnish Trump as he is campaigning for next years election.
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I don't have any idea why the Democrats are going forward with impeachment
You probably don't have any idea because you don't understand the phrase "rule of law".
Re: Impeachment failure (Score:1)
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Because the R team is going to let the D team do any of those things?
The first step for them to do any of those things is getting as many of the R team out of the way as possible. They think going after Trump and showing that the R team all support a known liar/traitor/incompetent/etc will help them.
They could be right, they could be wrong.
*grabs popcorn*
Re: Impeachment failure (Score:1)
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Re: sentencing guidelines for bribery and extortio (Score:1)
Didn't they predict this? (Score:2)
They are headed towards singularity.
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IIUC, they have a rather narrow idea of just how the Singularity will occur. And I'm reluctant to attribute their failure to the onset of the Singularity, though I do attribute Trump and B.Johnson in Britain to that. Possibly also Welsh nationalism...though not Scots nationalism, as that has a long history.
That said, it's often difficult to figure out what's due to the onset of the Singularity, and what's just ordinary human stupidity. Clearly the increasing automation of the labor force leading to the d
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The internet?
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Yes. Before the silly valley suits got a hold of it, the Internet was fun. Back when it was just a DARPA project, and only university students, researchers, and government labs had access, the Internet was not the cesspit it is now. Back then, we only had to worry about idiots in September. Now just about every online space is dominated by idiots, all the time. Thanks Silicon Valley!
The Singularity (Score:4, Insightful)
As I understand the concept, as hype progresses, hype will eventually be able to create an improved version of its itself, which can then repeat endlessly until we reach infinite hype.
Did I misunderstand something?
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This is known as the hyper loop.
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futurism... (Score:2)
If someone could please define this for me in real terms, I would greatly appreciate it. In the past, I have been tasked with future-proofing my design so I am now wondering if in the past that I have been somehow living in the future.
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\noun\
1. A buzzword, typically included in elaborate for-profit schemes to extract money from forward-thinking and easily fooled venture capitalists.
Re: futurism... (Score:3, Insightful)
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Re: futurism... (Score:1)
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My four year old nephew has a very active imagination. Doesn't make much sense, but it's active. So, not that different from the Silicon Valley crowd. Except he's not an asshole.
Re: futurism... (Score:1)
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They also believe the rich techies who tell them they will lead them to the Promised Land (e.g. Mars) away from the Common Earth People.
Re: futurism... (Score:1)
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Futurism is the practice of attempting to make predictions about the future.
Anything beyond that is one person's or one group of people's idea as to how to do that or what the results should look like. It's less reliable than economics, but does have modest value...if you don't take it too seriously.
FWIW, you can't future proof your designs without specifying a time frame. For 5 years you can be fairly accurate, most of the time, if you are conservative. (But would you have predicted that browsers would
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Bunch of snide answers that don't actually explain anything.
The idea of the Singularity is that technology improves at an exponential rate while its cost also decreases exponentially. This is pretty clearly the case, as corollaries to Moore's Law are everywhere in the realm of technology. If you plot, for example, the improvements in telecommunications are plotted on a graph over time it will generally follow an exponential curve. Same with computing, robotics, medicine, etc., and for most aspects of tec
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I recommend the first half of the book 'The Singularity is Near', even though
it's meant for ten year old minds.
FTFY
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Sorry that you're not able to understand exponential growth, maybe someone will explain it to you when you finish high school.
Sounds like a scam (Score:2)
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Re: Sounds like a scam (Score:3, Funny)
U.S. labor law requires 60-day layoff notice (Score:1, Troll)
Lol. Unless you're President Obama and the layoff announcements are coming just before the general election for your second term [govinfo.gov] (search for 'ignore' and read the surrounding text).
High cost schools are on the way out as people (Score:3)
High cost schools are on the way out as people are stopping taking out student loans.
Re:High cost schools are on the way out as people (Score:4, Insightful)
What we'll see instead is that while Nursing programs, Engineering schools, etc. will continue to exist, bullshit degrees like "Futurism" will start to go away because they don't offer any real value.
Too little, too late? (Score:2)
IIRC the primary purpose of this 'Singularity' organization was to make it possible for tech titans to live forever, cybernetically at least. If the expected date of this so-called singularity is now beyond the expected lifetime of these wannabe immortals I imagine that could dry up a lot of funding.