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Founder, Owner and Director:  KEnC Ventures was founded by Ralf G.J. Knoll, who owns 100% of this company (PSC, UBO) as a means for self-realisation.

Short bio:
Entrepreneur, Futurist, Physicist, Consultant, Philosopher, Psych.C., Freethinker, INTJ-A, HSP, FRSA.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ralfknoll/

Hence, welcome to my page — I will continue to write in the first person from now on:

This company is partly the continuation of what I have done since the year 2000, namely as an independent freelance consultant under the logo name Knoll – Engineering & Consulting. However, in addition, and due to its limited liability legal form GmbH, it is also my holding company to invest in projects, startups and more mature companies. Services in this context are offered primarily to startups and investors, who are passionate about:

1. Artificial Life (AL) & Artificial Superintelligence (ASI)
2. System Change &  Environmental Technology
3. Deep Tech & Quantum Computing
4. High Tech & Wearable Tech

See “volunteering section” on my LinkedIn profile:
Tech Tour Europe, ACE Amsterdam “Caempus”, High-Tech NRW, Trinity Entrepreneurial Society, LSE London, the RSA London, etc.

Deliberate overlap between my social impact initiatives and the #foundersclub below:
The term “founder” in our FoundersClub is understood in a broad sense — not limited to commercial startups. Anyone who initiates positive change, builds communities, or leads a movement or social idea is, in essence, a founder.
Therefore, intellectuals and changemakers from circles such as the RSA or the LSE’s philosophy and social innovation communities are warmly invited to contribute their perspectives and ideas.

The #ShapeTechTour — a unique experience:
In the above context, I am organising a #ShapeTechTour every summer – and members can join:

Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts for People and the Economy (SHAPE) is a collective name for the social sciences, humanities and the arts.

I work at the intersection of technology, society, and the human sciences, exploring how emerging innovations reshape our culture — and inversely, how wisdom, ethics, and SHAPE perspectives can shape the technological development process.

Each summer, I visit Europe’s major innovation and reflection hubs — from Eindhoven’s deep-tech ecosystem to London’s SHAPE institutions and Cambridge’s scientific and philosophical communities.

Over time, this has become the #ShapeTechTour: part study trip, part innovation journey, part philosophical workshop — a space for dialogue across disciplines and generations.

It is my way of bringing SHAPE and technology together into a more holistic understanding of our future.

This journey has become my annual #ShapeTechTour — exploring how SHAPE disciplines can guide the technologies — that in turn shape us.
Hence, the word “shape” has truly a double meaning here!

Among a few other tours, here is one example – the DUS-LDN-CAM #shapetechtour.

Hashtag Cloud: #ThinkersAndMakersTour #SocietyMeetsTech #EthicsInMotion #FromSocratesToSilicon #SHAPEmeetsTech #TechTour #DeepTechDialogue #LifelongLearningTour #PhilosophyRoundTable #KEnCVentures #RalfGJKnoll  
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The Founders Club — #foundersclub #kencventures #knollcapitalgroup:
My team and I try to help founders, investors, CEOs on their journey.

Where founders come not to show off, but to grow wiser.
A learning ground for those who build with heart, mind, and soul.
For leaders who believe capitalism doesn’t have to be stupid.

Invitation to join the #foundersclub tribe (PDF download):

2025-08-18_KEnC-Ventures-KCG-foundersclub_v78_open

2025-08-18_KEnC-Ventures-KCG-foundersclub_v78_sec

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Deliberate overlap between #foundersclub and KNOLL Capital Group Ltd.
To ensure that my investors (at least try to) share the same values and corporate ethics, I usually invite them all, to become part of the #foundersclub — which is why shareholders of KCG https://knollcapitalgroup.com/ can attend for free!

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Networking with C-level managers:
Young founders can join KCG’s Shareholder & Associates Meeting (SAM) to network with former/current C-level managers who are our investors — and vice versa – as also indicated here: https://knollcapitalgroup.com/gallery/

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Hardware for artificial intelligence:
Finally, as a futurist/physicist, I am interested in developing various “AI Hardware Platforms” specially tailored for AGI – including quantum computers, distributed neural networks, neuromorphic chip design, optoelectronic crystals, etc.

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The Future of AI:
In this context, I am also genuinely interested in the ‘Philosophical and Practical Implications’ between “now” and the “future ASI & singularity.”

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1984: The Beginning of My Journey in Artificial Life, AI, Complex Systems, and Philosophy

In 1984, in my first semester, I programmed John Horton Conway’s Game of Life — and in 1986, I had programmed my first neural network, right after Geoffrey Hinton published his influential “Learning representations by back-propagating errors” in Nature in the same year – and John Hopfield his paper “Computing with Neural Circuits: A Model” in Science.

In short, I was working in AI during its early formative years, and I consider myself an early pioneer.

However, with the onset of the so-called “AI Winter,” when funding and momentum collapsed, I shifted for several decades into engineering and deep-tech hardware.

I returned to AI in late 2022, with the emergence of large-scale generative models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and the rebirth of accelerated computing driven by NVIDIA.

However, since 1986, I have been deeply engaged in both the technical and philosophical dimensions of AI and the long-term future of humanity.

I have been particularly fascinated by the idea that a kind of natural principle (incl. universal laws of physics)—like anti-entropy or extropy, as discussed by thinkers such as Teilhard de Chardin, Frank Tippler and Max More—might stand behind the drive toward ASI and artificial life. If such a telos exists, then the emergence of increasingly intelligent systems may be broadly inevitable, even if the responsibility to steer these developments toward a positive, utopian (rather than dystopian) trajectory remains entirely ours.

These reflections, combined with rising concerns about AI’s growing energy consumption and accelerating climate change, led to my (see download section below) Jan-2025 article “Artificial Life Holocene Extinction Race” (#ALHER).

In it, I describe a race between two opposing outcomes:
(1) a collapse scenario, in which climate change prevents humanity from ever reaching ASI, and
(2) a success scenario, in which we make the right strategic and ethical decisions to achieve beneficial superintelligence in time.

Of course, these two outcomes represent the radical endpoints of a broader spectrum, serving as illustrative extremes rather than precise forecasts — real trajectories will likely contain variations, complexities, and unexpected forms of resilience.

For clarity, this line of inquiry is not an endorsement of a post-human telos. It is an attempt to understand what certain theories logically imply — not what we ought to desire or believe, including beliefs grounded in religious traditions. I aim to study the ideas, not to promote them. Please don’t confuse the messenger with the message.

Alongside these developments, I have been deeply involved in technical and philosophical discussions about AI and the future of humanity. For example, I have participated in various events and summer courses at the LSE in London (where I met Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Nancy Cartwright, Richard Healey, Frank Wilczek, Lawrence Krauss and others) — and at the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion.

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Here is an example of an interview/podcast on Transhumanism and Posthumanism:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yIvopxWX0i8&t=411s

(The English version will come soon.)

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NEW:  Here is an example article on the essential topic of — AI Ethics & Human Survival:

2025-01-08_KEnC-Ventures-ALHER-Only-Well-Controlled-AI-Can-Replace-Humankind_v2-sec.pdf

2025-01-08_KEnC-Ventures-ALHER-Only-Well-Controlled-AI-Can-Replace-Humankind_v2-open.pdf

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More articles and material can be found in the download section of this website.