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SAN FRANCISCO--Google's influence on the Web can be likened to game theory, said Google Director of Research Peter Norvig.

Very simply defined, game theory applied to economics is a study of the strategic interactions among players and their influences on each other.

"We (once) thought of ourselves as observers of the Web. We made a copy of it, and we thought it was just a reflection of the Web," Norvig said Sunday while speaking here at the Singularity Summit, a two-day conference on artificial intelligence.

"Now we understand that we're co-evolving. When we make a change, it changes. Search engine optimizers watch us, and when we make a move, then they make a move. The Web moves in different directions because of the interaction between us," he said.

Norvig, who wrote a widely read book on artificial intelligence, gave the opening keynote address at the second day of the Singularity conference, which drew about 800 attendees. The so-called singularity refers to the point at which advances in artificial intelligence will bring about self-improving machines that are smarter than humans. Some technologists believe that the current rapid advancement in computer hardware and software are leading us to this point.

But Norvig pooh-poohed that idea, saying that current data doesn't necessarily show that we're at a time of accelerating change brought on by technology. For example, he referred to a chart of U.S. GDP growth over the last 100 or so years that showed constant progress, without great spikes because of space flight or the introduction of the personal computer. Similarly, a chart of the annual growth in the world's GDP shows a 1 percent to 2 percent fluctuation in growth from 1970, with no solid trend up or down, he said.

"From any point in time, it can look like things are happening more rapidly," said Norvig, who's also the former head of the NASA Ames computational group.

Similarly, when it comes to artificial general intelligence, Norvig said that he hasn't seen much indication that we're at an increased point of breakthrough versus 20 or 30 years ago. "We need more data and more models of what that data does," he said.

However, Norvig said he was encouraged by recent research in AI, such as work on "probabilistic first-order logic" at Stanford University and UC Berkeley. He said that probabilistic first order logic, or programming software that can quantify data over multiple states, will be key to developing artificial general intelligence. Other prerequisites include software that can draw hierarchical representations, such as vision systems that can make leaps from pixels to faces to people in a crowd, he said. Machines will also be able to learn from lots of data, online and in an efficient way, he said. "Once we have those components then we have artificial general intelligence."

Earlier in the talk, he compared a child to a baby chimpanzee, saying that there's more similarity than difference. But when comparing the cultures of humans and chimpanzees, that's where the real differences are visible. "That's the promise of what humans are. It's not the individual intelligence but this collective intelligent culture," he said.

SAN FRANCISCO--Prediction: We are just a few years away from a catastrophic disaster brought about by an autonomous computer system making a decision--a disaster that will provoke a political response on par with 9/11.

That prediction is from Wendell Wallach, lecturer at Yale University's Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics, who hypothesized about the challenges and opportunities we face in an age of artificially intelligent machines, such as self-driving cars or household robots. Wallach spoke here Saturday at the Singularity Summit, a two-day conference about AI and the possibility of developing smarter-than-human machines.

"I'm your friendly skeptic. I'm not convinced that we understand enough about intelligence to know whether we can pull this off," he said, referring to computers that can out-think people.

Wallach's specialty is bioethics, so he talked at length about the subject during his speech, "The Road to Singularity: Comedic Complexity, Technological Thresholds, and Bioethical Broad Jumps." Wallach said that we can't underestimate the political power of fear when it comes to research and development of intelligent systems.

"How will this be handled from a public policy approach? Fear's not likely to stop scientific research but it's certainly likely to slow it down," he said. "We need some mechanism for evaluating real potential dangers and (help) leaders and the public to discriminate against what are the real challenges and the speculative ones?"

As a result, a new field of inquiry is emerging, he said. It's referred to by various names, including "machine morality" and robo-ethics, which was coined by people in the European Union. The field, Wallach said, is about coming up with and implementing moral decision-making facilities for artificial agents. Such standards are necessary for a world in which autonomous systems can make choices.

"Computers will have to be explicit reasoners. We must build AI to be sensitive to our moral systems.

"Our intelligence emerges out of emotion and instincts. Computers start as logical platforms and if they have emotions and instincts, it's only because we elect to insert them," he said. "Computers will need "suprarational faculties, not just emotions--they'll need things like social (skills) and a theory of mind," he said.

Wallach acknowledged that concepts like machine morality and rights for robots are speculative. "These are fascinating thought experiments."

Barney Pell, founder of natural language search engine Powerset, added later during a panel: "We can talk about (these things) and no one can prove us wrong for 20 to 30 years."

SAN FRANCISCO--At the current rate of technological change, people in 2025 should be able to spend $400 for an Apple iPod with 40 million gigabytes, more than enough room to hold every desirable movie or book.

That's the prediction of Rodney Brooks, professor of robotics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and CTO of iRobot. He cited the iPod as an example of exponential change in technology advancement--a subject of Moore's law--based on the iPod's storage leaps.

"So much for the RIAA and DRM," he joked.

Brooks gave the opening keynote here at the Singularity Summit, a two-day conference designed to discuss the benefits and risks of advancing artificial intelligence. He's among an esteemed lineup of speakers, including Steve Jurvetson, managing director of venture firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson; and Peter Norvig, Google's director of research and the former head of the NASA Ames computational group.

Brooks' talk focused partially on exponential technological change as a point for reaching artificial intelligence. In another example of exponentials, Brooks said Stanford's efforts in AI have grown by four orders of magnitude in 26 years. In 1979, Stanford AI lab built a robot that moved 20 meters over six hours. Then in 2005, Stanford built Stanley, an autonomous driving car that traveled 200 kilometers in six hours to win the DARPA Grand Challenge robot race.

But Brooks immediately expressed skepticism about the so-called singularity, the technological creation of the smarter-than-human intelligence.

"It's either technosalvation or technoholocaust," Brooks said. "But it's never quite as good as we think or as bad as we think."

That said, Brooks added that AI and robots will be essential to the future.

For example, iRobot, where he is chief technology officer, now has roughly 2.5 million robots in people's homes, up from zero in 2001. His company is also building military robots, 5,000 of which are deployed in Iraq. He said the U.S. military has about 1,000 robots called the Packbot in Iraq for the purpose of looking for roadside bombs.

He also talked about projects going on at MIT to develop robots. Kismet, for example, incorporates a visual attention system so it can respond to people in a way that helps people to trust it. Kismet examines skin tone, motion and color through cameras in order to appropriately respond to people.

Brooks prediction for the future? He hypothesized about several scenarios involving artificial intelligence. He painted one picture in which people will be more dependent on robots for help in the home, largely because of an aging Baby Boomer population that needs more care than younger generations can provide. But in a scary turn, a virus infects the bots, killing millions of elderly Boomers--except for the Rolling Stone's Keith Richards, he joked.

More seriously, he said believes the population is on a course to change itself. For example, he believes that more people in the future will elect to implant brain-to-machine interfaces, such as brain stimulators, cochlear implants and visual implants. (Already, roughly 50,000 patients have cochlear implants to enhance their hearing; and visual implants and brain stimulators are currently in clinical trials.) He also believes that drug and genetic enhancement will become the norm.

"The point is that when artificial general intelligence appears, the world will be a very different place than it is today," he said. "We will be long gone."