So I'm scanning google news and I see this article about a new "University" (not accredited yet) in the Silicon Valley, founded by Ray Kurzweil. This is tangentially game related, I promise. For those of you who don't pay attention to futurist nerd stuff, Kurzweil is one of the main guys predicting the advent of the Technological Singularity (AI that can make itself smarter, tech advances at unimaginable rates, etc) about halfway through this century. And he's starting the Singularity University, with backing from Google and NASA.

Go ahead, make the Robocalypse/Skynet jokes. Especially since Google went ahead and flagged everything ever as malware last week. I mean, come on. Talk about low-hanging comedic fruit. But after some further reading, I'm not especially worried about world-changing progress emerging from this thing. Why? Something about the faculty list seems a bit... off.

What could it be? It's a blue-ribbon panel of Nobel physicists and nanotech/AI professors. Except for the fact that for some reason, Will Wright has been hired as faculty. No, "Will Wright" is not some obscure genius rocket surgeon who shares a name with the game designer. They have hired the guy who made Spore. WHY.

I mean, don't get me wrong, I like Will Wright. I'm not a huge fan of his games, but he is a great idea man. But he's not exactly a scientist. So I'm not worried about Singularity U destroying humanity anymore, because hiring a big-name game developer is not how you get substantive research done. This seemed like it had the potential, on first read, to generate some interesting progress, but now it just looks like a $25,000 networking camp for grad students.