The Lifeboat Foundation has a list of the top ten.

[11:30 AM update]

Artificial life in three to ten years?

Bedau said there are legitimate worries about creating life that could "run amok," but there are ways of addressing it, and it will be a very long time before that is a problem.

"When these things are created, they're going to be so weak, it'll be a huge achievement if you can keep them alive for an hour in the lab," he said. "But them getting out and taking over, never in our imagination could this happen."

I hope that's not attributable to a mere lack of imagination...

One thing I keep wondering about the singularity:

Why do many people who think that such a thing is really going to happen behave as if it is not? If I really believed I might live thousands of years if I only live the next 50, there are all sorts of things I would not do right now, with driving or riding in a car at the top of the list.

I'm sure there are those that are living like they believe in it. But I haven't heard of many. The calorie-restriction people seem to be serious about it, but they are only going for a simple multiplier, probably 2x at the most. Perhaps a large percentage of them are hoping to stretch their natural lives until the singularity hits. Do most of them avoid the largest statistical causes of death?

BTW, I think I'm a singularity skeptic. I think we will significantly expand the human lifetime, mainly through bioengineering and possibly some nanotechnological techniques, but I think many things will turn out to be very very complicated. In particular, I think nanotechnology, especially self-replicating nanotechnology will be a much bigger hurdle than anyone gives it credit for, and I think that artificial intelligence which is self-improving will also be very hard to develop. I also think "uploading" a human mind will turn out to be very very difficult. At the time Mary Shelly wrote Frankenstein, people really thought it would only be a few more years until scientists could do just about anything. That's what people are still thinking. Fusion power was 20 years away, and is always 20 years away. Not everything we envision technologically comes to fruition.

One can think it likely to happen, but not be certain. That in fact is my position.

Jeff, you have to do what you have to do. Yes, driving is a risk. So are a bunch of other things that we do on a regular basis. Statistics be damned. If that's what is driving your life, I would not call that a good thing.

As far as life extension goes, right now for every 5 years you live, you get to tack on an extra year to your current life expectancy. Mine's 71 years right now (even adjusting for my diabetes and hypertension), so if I live to be that age, my life expectancy will actually be 75, so I actually should have a life expectancy of 76. And that's the current rate. My kids' expectancy is 80, which gives them an extended age of 92, thereabouts. I may not live to see the Singularity, but my kids sure are going to. Even at the most pessimistic rates, maybe my children won't see it, but I know sure as hell that my grandkids will. If they actually cure diabetes in the next three years like they are claiming they will, I should hit 80 easily. Kurzweil thinks that if we can keep alive until 2020, barring accidents (and not being too old), we will live for as long as we want. (I can't find the link where he says that right now)

The Singularity isn't going to hit us in the face. We may very well come up with a date that says, before pre- and after post-singularity—but we'll come up with it after it's passed, not before.

Why do many people who think that such a thing is really going to happen behave as if it is not?

That's one of the things about the Technological Singularity, once it happens, nobody is really going to know what happens next. Utopia? Dystopia?

My real concern is the Fermi Paradox. It really makes me wonder if a Technological Singularity is survivable by a species.

...never in our imagination could this happen

Remind me not to go on a cruise with the guy who said that.

"No Sir, It can't possibly sink, never in our imagination could this happen. The Titanic was built with many new safety features never before seen".

I'm sure the guy who imported armadillos to Florida thought they'd stay put too. How's that working out?

Hey, I'm a sci-fi guy and lifetime space cadet but I think that serious skepticism is warranted about many of these oh so trendy Transhumanist Technologies. Many of these (e.g. 'iminent AI') have been touted for decades. Maybe, just maybe, they're NOT POSSIBLE for one good scientific or practical engineering or another. Keep dreaming & keep working but don't accept these things as articles of faith.

I forget who pointed this out to me, but if a biological thing was possible that would turn the planet into grey goo, nature would have found it by now.

Its not like nature is holding back algea from taking over the world for some reason - if an algea could do it, it already would have...