Singularity Summer: Eight Live Lectures on Machine Learning, Story, and the Singularity

Eight live sessions across July and August. €100 for the full series. Reserve your spot: pay via PayPal.

The technological singularity did not arrive as a fact. It arrived as a story, one we have been telling ourselves about machines, progress, and what it means to be human. This July and August, I want to take that story apart with you, live, across eight sessions and two months.

I am joining Philosophy Portal for Singularity Summer, a two-month critical exploration of the singularity hosted by Cadell Last. It runs in two movements. In July, machine learning expert Thomas Hamelryck takes us under the hood of the technology itself. In August, I take over to ask the question the engineering never answers: what is the human story inside all of this, and who gets to write it?

Here is the conviction that runs through everything I do. Technology is the How. It is never the Why or the What. We are story-telling creatures first, and the singularity is the largest story we have ever tried to tell about ourselves. If we do not learn to read it, reframe it, and rewrite it, someone else will write it for us.

Part One: The Machine (July, with Thomas Hamelryck)

Thomas Hamelryck is a researcher at the University of Copenhagen, holding a full professorship in machine learning and high dimensional biological data analysis shared between the Department of Biology and the Department of Computer Science. He is a specialist in Bayesian modelling and probabilistic machine learning, with current research focused on protein structure prediction and protein evolution. In other words, the person you want explaining what this technology actually is, rather than what the marketing says it is.

All Sundays, 8:30pm CEST (i.e., 2:30pm EDT), online.

July 5, Session 1: The Basics of Machine Learning.

What machine learning is, how it works, and the plain mechanics underneath the headlines.
July 12, Session 2: The Myths of Machine Learning.

What it is not. The claims that do not survive contact with how these systems actually behave.
July 19, Session 3: Human Relationships and Institutions.

How machine learning is already reshaping the way we relate to one another and the institutions we live inside.
July 26, Session 4: The Potential and the Limits of Machine Learning.

Where the technology can genuinely take us, and the hard edges it keeps running into.

Part Two: The Story (August, with Nikola Danaylov)

This is my half. Four sessions on the part most people skip, the Why and the What of the human being living inside the machine.

All Sundays, 8:30pm CEST (i.e., 2:30pm EDT), online.

August 2, Session 5: The Nature of Story.

Why story is not decoration on top of human life but the operating system of it, and what that means in an age of machines.

August 16, Session 6: The Human Story.

The story we have told about ourselves, where it came from, and why it is now under pressure from the technologies we built.

August 23, Session 7: Capitalism, Politics, Technology as Story.

Reading the systems we treat as inevitable as exactly what they are: stories that can be questioned, contested, and changed.

August 30, Session 8: Rewriting the Human Story.

Where we go from here. If that title sounds familiar, it should. It is the heart of the book I am writing now, and this session is the closest you can get to that work in progress, in real time, in conversation.

What you get

Eight live sessions, over 24 hours of content across two months, with unlimited lifetime access to the recordings. You can take the full series, Thomas Hamelryck on the machine, and me on the story, as one continuous package, or join as a Philosophy Portal member for access to the wider community and course library. Join anytime: you receive full recordings of any sessions already held, so a later start costs you nothing.

All sessions are online, Sundays at 8:30pm CEST (2:30pm EDT). After payment, please make sure your PayPal email is one you check, since that is where your access will be sent. You will then be added to the Philosophy Portal, where all live sessions and recordings are hosted, and you will receive your joining details by email before your first session.

How to join

The full package of all 8 lectures is €100, payable via PayPal. Reserve your spot here.