The new acronym for the Singularity Institute is MIRI.
The first google hit is the wikipedia page for the Star Trek: TOS episode Miri (S1E8). It's about how 90% of the population of not-Earth was destroyed by an existential threat leaving nothing but irrational children. The crew find themselves under a death sentence from this threat and try to find a solution, but they need the children's help. However the children think themselves immune and immortal and won't assist. In the last seconds, the crew manages to convince the children that the existential threat cannot be ignored and must be solved or the kids will eventually die too. With their help, the crew saves the day and everyone lives happily ever after. Also, the episode was so ahead of it's time that even though it was reviewed as excellent, it got so many complaints that it was never rebroadcast for 20 years.
I think my symbolism detector just pegged off the charts then exploded.
For the record, we totally didn't know this before you posted this comment. I remember seeing the Google search result but didn't read the plot summary on Wikipedia.
When I searched the first hit was the Malaysian town called Miri. Looks like an example of filter bubbles.
MIRI's number-one goal will be the discovery of a Consequentialist Anticipatory Logic that can save the world (codename, MIRI-CAL).
I think this is a good change. Bravo!
It will be hard not to refer to "Singinst" anymore as it did trip off the tougne, but I guess "The Singularity Institute for or against Artificial Intelligence, depending on which seems like a better idea at the time" was never really on the cards.
This is an interesting example of how the changing definitions doesn't change reality. 'Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence' sounded all future-y to me, and 'Machine Intelligence Research Institute' sounds all technical and intelligent (silly stereotypes), but in reality they've not changed. Still the same people, doing the same things.
Gonna have to change the site name, though...
And "Machine Intelligence Research Institute" is appropriately descriptive while still being general enough.
MIRI. Machine Intelligence Research Institute.
Adequate. Not especially inspiring but I can't think of anything better either. It is certainly better than "Singularity Institute". (Good change!)
"Machine Intelligence" is my preferred term. "Singularity" seems like pseudoscientific terminology to me.
it's better to have a name that doesn't give a new person all kinds of weird initial associations as their first impression.
Yeah, though I buy into much of what Kurzweil has to say, Singularity has always rubbed me the wrong way - too much of Omega Immanentizing the Eschaton for me.
Is there any other snappy term out there for the idea that we're headed for very big changes through exponential performance improvement in lots of technologies?
To me, "Machine Intelligence" sounds less worn than "Artificial Intelligence", and also seems to more strongly imply that they're talking about general intelligence rather than narrow AI. But I don't know whether those were the actual reasons.
I personally dislike the change, but I trust that you guys have changed your names for a reason. I think I may be reacting negatively due to the nostalgia factor.
Reversal test: if it were always called MIRI and just now decided to change its name to SIAI, how would you feel about it? (This isn't quite the right test because maintaining the same name over time does have some value, but it might help.)
Good.
The name "Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence" seemed clunky to me from the moment I encountered it.
Too long. Two parts that don't work together, a first part with social acceptability issues, and a second part which has been taboo in leading tech circles since 1992.
It took me about half a year before I stopped typing siai.org when looking for the Institute's site.
Not to mention that SU took over the mindspace, and that SI occasionally strayed from the area implied by its name.
So, good job! I like it.
I just realized that "MIRI" is (perhaps intentionally) evocative of the word "mirror", which is all kinds of suitable.
I notice that http://www.miri.org is very definitely not a placeholder for a new Singularity Institute page. Have you managed to acquire it?
(miri.com seems as though it should be available, but not exactly entirely appropriate. Maybe better than nothing).
Now, all we need is a replacement for "Singularitarian" ... this, time, one that people can get right when they try to repeat it.
Also, when you're trying to explain that there's a gigantic difference between you and another organisation with a similar-sounding name, you can sound a little like the People's Front of Judea.
My impression is that anyone who has ever heard of Singularity University doesn't even have it in their hypothesis space that you mean something different when you say Singularity Institute.
By whom?
Almost every time I spoke to anyone who wasn't deeply familiar with either SU or SI. Including almost every press person.
Rudi Hoffman confused them when I sought a quote from him and mentioned Singinst. And him you'd expect to move in the right circles to know the difference.
There is a real brand issue. I say "Singularity Institute" to people down the pub, the ones who've heard the word go "ah, Kurzweil!" (I was trying to explain this site I like called LessWrong.)
I told someone at work, and they said, "Oh, like on that Fringe episode [about Kurzweillian uploading]."
Kinda awkward to say aloud. I think Institute for the Research of Machine Intelligence would sound better. Minor nitpick.
Really? To me, the extra words in "Institute for the Research of Machine Intelligence" feel redundant, and MIRI is better for being concise and to the point.
What MIRI really is is the Institute for study of emergent intelligences, whether machine, biological, hybrid or any other kind, but given how Eliezer dislikes the term emergence, I can see why EIRI would be a non-starter. Still, I like the new name better than the old one.
The reason he does not like the term is that, as pointed out before, "emergence" is not an explanation of anything. However, it is an observational phenomenon: when you get a lot of simple things together, they combine in ways one could not foresee and the resulting entities behave by the rules not constructable from (but reducible to) those of the simple constituents. When you combine a lot of simple molecules, you get a solid, a liquid or a gas with the properties you generally cannot infer without observing them first. When you get a group of people together, they start interacting in apriori unpredictable ways as they form a group. Once you observe the group behavior, you can often reduce it to that of its constituents, but a useful description is generally not in terms of the constituents, but in terms of the collective. For example, in thermodynamics people use gas laws and other macroscopic laws instead of the Newton's laws.
I am guessing that one reason that the (friendly) machine intelligence problem is so hard is that intelligence is an emergent property: once you understand it, you can reduce it to interactions between neurons, but you cannot infer it from suc...
http://singularity.org/blog/2013/01/30/we-are-now-the-machine-intelligence-research-institute-miri/
As Risto Saarelma pointed out on IRC, "Volcano Lair Doom Institute" would have been cooler, but this is pretty good too. As the word "Singularity" has pretty much lost its meaning, it's better to have a name that doesn't give a new person all kinds of weird initial associations as their first impression. And "Machine Intelligence Research Institute" is appropriately descriptive while still being general enough.