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Tim Urban speaks at President’s Seminar

On Tuesday, Nov. 15, Tim Urban came to speak to the Stevens students, faculty, and staff. Urban’s presentation, entitled Mars, Superintelligent AI, and Other Not Normal Things About the Future, covered a wide range of topics, starting with income inequality and ending with a realization of the our place in the future. The presentation began with a brief introduction from President Farvardin, and then Urban took over to speak about a number of subjects that managed to keep the audience engaged all the way through.

President Farvardin began his introduction with a story about how he invited Urban to speak with his class of 27 students last year and how he felt that the whole university deserved to hear him speak this year. President Farvardin noted in his introduction Urban’s many successes, such as his blog Wait But Why and the TED talk that Urban recently gave. These are only a few of the amazing accomplishments that Urban has completed. Before handing the presentation off to Urban, President Farvardin was sure to warn the audience of the impact of this presentation by saying “I encourage you to fasten your seat belts…”

Urban began his presentation with some off-the-cuff remarks that got the audience laughing and engaged in his presentation. Urban had to make a “small” edit to the title of his presentation that he felt would better encompass the topics he was about to cover in his presentation. When he revealed the new title of this presentation, it had managed to triple in size and include an apology to President Farvardin on what was about to happen during the presentation.

The presentation shifted to slides that attempted to explain Urban’s thought process. Urban spoke to the idea that we are creatures who seek instant gratification, much like our evolutionary ancestors. This was his explanation for the next series of slides, which included images of things such as the amount of water on earth and a quintillion sour patch kids compared to various objects in the universe. At the end of these slides, Urban noted that they don’t have much to do with the actual substance of his presentation.

Urban then shifted focus to our place, as humans, in the universe. This began with a look at all of the people currently on earth. Urban shifted to his creative slides by showing that all the people in the world could fit into New York City. This then evolved into showing that all the space that humans take up in the world could be condensed down to the size of an M&M. This led Urban to the idea of our place within our family trees. By going back multiple generations, Urban managed to show that we have thousands of ancestors that eventually lead to us.

From this idea, Urban went back to the beginning of the universe: the Big bang. At this point, Urban noted that this was the original start to his presentation, before he got distracted. Urban started with the birth of the universe and eventually shrunk that down to the start of life on Earth and eventually to the beginning of the industrial revolution. Urban did this because he wants us to appreciate our place in the development of the universe. He specifically noted the fact that all of the development in the universe has been increasing at an exponential rate.

This developed into the idea of what we perceive as normal versus reality. To demonstrate this concept, Urban talked about the different types of virtual reality and where that is leading the development of technology. He mentioned all of the different types of virtual reality in development now, particularly the one that Facebook is working on called inside-out virtual reality.

Urban believes that the development of technology can be seen in the project flow from artificial narrow intelligence to general intelligence to finally superintelligence. Urban went into great detail on each of the stages, as well as their current and projected development. He ended this segment by noting that we really do not know what is going to come after superintelligent AI. According to Urban, the superintelligent AI will be to mankind what mankind is to monkeys.

This lead to the discussion of the tech giant Elon Musk. Urban tied Musk’s visions to the future to what he had discussed during his presentation. According to Urban, Musk essentially wants to make sure that we don’t put all of our eggs in one basket and that we use Mars as a backup. Urban used this as his final push to motivate the audience to try and look beyond what we consider normal and move into the future to change the world.

The presentation ended with a brief Q&A session between audience members and Urban. Questions mainly revolved around the last portion of Urban’s presentation, the superintelligent AI. Many students wanted to know his views on the future of superintelligent AI, such as what he thought its impact on humanity would be. Finally, to thank Urban for coming and giving the presentation, President Farvardin presented Urban with a Stevens sweatshirt, which he quickly threw on. Urban said “Stevens is revolutionary, and that’s demonstrated by its constant rise in rankings because of President Farvardin,” noting that Stevens is similar in many ways to great companies like SpaceX.

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