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Humanity will be radically changed by technology in the future. We foresee the feasibility of redesigning the human condition, including such parameters as the inevitability of aging, limitations on human and artificial intellects, unchosen psychology, suffering, and our confinement to the planet earth.

Board of Directors and Staff

Ben Goertzel

Ben Goertzel (goertzel.org) is founder and CEO of two computer science firms Novamente LLC (novamente.net) and Biomind LLC (biomind.com), and of the non-profit AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute). He has served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand. He is author of two books focused on the future of technology and society Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). He serves as Director of Research for the Singularity Institute for AI.

Mike LaTorra

Mike LaTorra writes and teaches in Las Cruces, New Mexico, USA. He is author of A Warrior Blends with Life: A Modern Tao. He serves on the Humanity+ Membership Committee and the Editorial Committee for Transhumanity. He also serves as President of the Daibutsuji Zen Temple where he is in training to become a Zen priest.

Sonia Arrison

Sonia Arrison is a futurist and policy analyst who has studied the impact of new technologies on society for the better part of a decade. A Senior Fellow at the California-based Pacific Research Institute and a columnist for TechNewsWorld, she is author of two previous books (Western Visions and Digital Dialog) as well as numerous PRI studies on technology issues. A frequent media contributor and guest, her work has appeared in many publications including CBS MarketWatch, CNN, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today. Often asked for advice on technology issues, Sonia has given testimony and served as an expert witness for various government committees such as the Congressional Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce and the California Commission on Internet Political Practices. She is an instructor for California's Command College and serves on the advisory boards for the Acceleration Studies Foundation and the Lifeboat Foundation. Her forthcoming book addresses the political, social, and individual impacts of radical human longevity.

Todd Huffman

Todd Huffman is a technologist and entrepreneur in Phoenix, AZ. He co-founded the sStitch project, a mobile computing company developing geospatial and social data organization techniques. He is co-founder of the BIL Conference, an open-culture big-ideas forum. He has worked or published in a variety of areas including neuroscience, cryonics, body modification, sustainable technology, tech in developing countries, technology transfer, and open-culture.

Joel Pitt

Joel Pitt is a multidisciplinary scientist who has contributed work to the fields of bioinformatics, artificial intelligence, and ecology. His Ph.D. (Lincoln University, New Zealand) involved the development of a spatially explicit stochastic ecological simulation. Joel obtained his B.Sc. with first class Honours from the University of Canterbury where he majored in computational biology and artificial intelligence. He contributed to research that applied artificial neural network categorisation and classification to ecological data, and developed novel search algorithms for micro-satellite DNA sequences. Since 2008 Joel has worked as an independent developer on both the OpenCog open-source AGI platform and has done ecological simulation work for government research institutes in New Zealand. Joel is also a founder of DrugR, a website dedicated to drug reform so that drug abuse is treated as a health issue instead of a criminal one. An issue which will become significantly important if people begin to more frequently use nootropics and other mechanisms of self-improvement that affect the mind.

Michael Vassar

Michael Vassar Michael Vassar is SIAI's President, and provides overall leadership of the SIAI as it develops its research capabilities and its role as a forum for discussion of the challenges and potential of artificial general intelligence. He is also responsible for the organization of the Singularity Summit. Previously, he was a Founder and Chief Strategist at SirGroovy.com, an online music licensing firm. Prior to that, he held positions with Aon, the Peace Corps, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Michael has been writing and speaking on topics related to the safe development of disruptive technologies for a number of years: his papers include the Lifeboat Foundation analysis of the risks of advanced molecular manufacturing co-authored with Robert Freitas, and "Corporate Cornucopia", authored for the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Task Force. He holds an M.B.A. from Drexel University and a B.S. in biochemistry from Penn State.

David Orban

David Orban David Orban is an entrepreneur and visionary. He is Advisor and European Lead of the Singularity University, a Founder and Chief Evangelist of WideTag, Inc., a high technology start-up company providing the infrastructure for an open Internet of Things. David shapes the strategic vision of its technologies by developing the policies and communication steps necessary to enable constructive progress. He is further a Scientific Advisory Board Member for the Lifeboat Foundation. David cuts across the limits of deep specialization to contribute to the new renaissance. He explains, “My vision is at the crossroads of technology and society as defined by their co-evolution.” David Orban’s personal motto is, “What is the question I should be asking?” This concept is his vehicle to accelerating cycles of invention and innovation in order to build the new world ahead.

Natasha Vita-More

Natasha Vita-More Natasha Vita-More, media artist and theorist, is a frequent guest speaker on topics concerning the future in the international arena. She is best known as designer of "Primo Posthuman". Her writings have been published in numerous books, she has appeared in more than twenty-four televised documentaries, and featured in magazines including The New York Times, Wired, Village Voice, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, U.S. News & World Report, Net Business, and Teleopolis. Natasha is a Fellow of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, Visiting Scholar at 21st Century Medicine, Scientific Board of Lifeboat Foundation, and advises non-profit organizations including Alcor Life Extension Foundation. She was formerly president of Extropy Institute from 2002-2005. As a bit of history, Natasha authored the "Transhuman Statement", Create/Recreate: the 3rd Millennial Culture (cybernetic culture and the future of humanism and the arts and sciences). In the early 1990s, she hosted the TV show "Transcentury UPdate" and was elected to the Green Party as a Los Angeles Councilperson.

Kristi Scott

Kristi Scott Kristi Scott is currently a Mass Communications & Media Arts PhD student at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale. Her general research interests are in the communication of the nano-, bio-, info-, cogno-, and robotic technologies to and from society through the medium of popular culture, particularly film and television. She has been a freelance writer since 2005. Since 2007 she has interned with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and has been a reviewer for the Journal of Evolution and Technology. She has presented at several conferences globally on topics of identity, self, popular culture and media. She's a member of the American Society of Bioethics and Humanities and a blogger for the Women’s Bioethics Project. You can reach her through email at: k_nscott@yahoo.com