Paul Saffo

Professor, Stanford University

Paul Saffo is a forecaster and essayist with over two decades experience exploring long-term technological change and its practical impact on business and society. He teaches at Stanford University and is on a research sabbatical from Institute for the Future where he has worked since 1985.

The founding Chairman of the Samsung Science Board, he serves on a variety of other boards including the Long Now Foundation, the Singapore National Research Foundation Science Advisory Board and is an Advisor to Red Planet Capital, and 3i Venture Capital. Paul also has served as an advisor and Forum Fellow to the World Economic Forum, and is a Fellow of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences. His essays have appeared in numerous publications, including The Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Wired, The Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, The New York Times and the Washington Post. He holds degrees from Harvard College, Cambridge University, and Stanford University.

At the 2007 Singularity Summit in San Francisco, hosted by the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, he gave a talk called "Machines of Loving Grace: Envisioning Advanced AI." There he observed that a long-anticipated vision of advanced AI is on the verge of arriving late and in utterly unexpected ways. Just as William Gibson once served up the the vision of cyberspace that shaped the 1990s Internet revolution, a poet named Richard Brautigan writing in San Francisco almost exactly 40 years ago penned his vision for what a world of advanced AI should be.

More recently, Paul Saffo gave a seminar at the Long Now Foundation in January of 2008 entitled Embracing Uncertainty on the challenges of accurate technology forecasting. He also delivered a keynote to conclude the Convergence08 unconference in the November, 2008. Video from the presentation is available below.

video


Mapping a Cone of Uncertainty

video

2008 Long Now Foundation, The Secret to Effective Forecasting
2007 Singularity Summit, Machines of Loving Grace
2006 NetSquared, Disruptive Technology

transcripts

2007 Singularity Summit, "Machines of Loving Grace: Envisioning Advanced AI"

audio

01.08 Long Now Foundation, Embracing Uncertainty: the secret to effective forecasting
09.07 Singularity Summit Machines of Loving Grace
02.07. The Agenda, The Interview: Paul Saffo
01.07. KQED, Forum with Michael Krasny