
Envision Conference
Nov 22 - 24, 2019
Princeton University
THE 2019 CONFERENCE
The theme of our 2019 conference was “The Future of Us.” The conference pushed participants to consider how new technologies will change how we live, our social groupings, our social, political, and economic systems, our psychology, and more fundamentally, what it means to be human. This theme emanated from our deeply held belief that careful consideration of these questions is central to maximizing the benefits of innovation.
The conference advanced its theme by:
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Drawing insights from wide-ranging perspectives. The conference included speakers from several disciplines, from technological researchers, to industry leaders, to philosophers. In addition to keynote addresses, speakers led smaller groups of participants in interactive workshops to spur participants’ independent thinking about the implications and potential uses of new technologies.
Fostering collaboration among the world’s future leaders. Participants had the opportunity to meet driven students from around the country and abroad and form small teams to propose a product, research plan or policy that implements or improves a new technology with the mentorship of speakers.

Speakers
Anders Sandberg - Senior Research Fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute
Michele Reilly - Founder of Turing Inc.
Kai Landre - Cyborg and Artist
Ruha Benjamin - Associate Professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, Author
Francesca Ferrando - Philosopher of the Posthuman
Phil Torres - Author, Associate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technology
Robin Hanson - Author, Associate Professor at George Mason University
Aubrey de Grey - Longevity researcher, Chief Science Officer at Strategies for SENS Foundation
Natalie Kofler - Director and Founder of Editing Nature
Hod Lipson - Roboticist, Director of Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University
Noam Cohen - Journalist, Author
Susan Schneider - Baruch Blumberg/NASA chair at the Library of Congress and NASS and Author of Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your MInd
Courtney Cogburn - Associate Professor of Social Work, Columbia University
Melinda Soares - NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Princeton Astrophysics
Ben Zion - Transhumanist Party Nominee for President
David Yaden - Researcher on Experiences of Awe, University of Pennsylvania
Whitney Huang - Engineer at Zipline
Liz Parrish - CEO of BioViva
Sures Kumar - Speculative Designer at Google AI
Wei Liu - Head of Machine Learning at Nuro
Brett Frischmann - Professor in Law, Business and Economics at Villanova School of Law
Umer Hassan - Assistant Professor at Rutgers University of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Nathan Danielson - Software Engineer at CTRL-Labs
Daniel Elton - Staff Scientist at the National Institute of Health