AGI-World (bruce klein’s blog)

The InnerSpace Foundation and The IF Prize

The IF takes the position that the most rapid timelines to solving humanity’s most serious problems — including providing complete and lasting cures for the most diseased and disabled — will be accomplished through widespread improvement of memory and mind, rather than through the best efforts of people who are well-meaning but of naturally limited abilities. - Dr. Pete Estep

On Apr 30th, 2008 in Palo Alto, Dr. Pete Estep will discuss the InnerSpace Foundation (IF), a new nonprofit being developed to promote and support neuroengineering approaches for the enhancement of memory and learning – biomedical goals that have the potential to improve not only the lives of those suffering from a specific malady, but everyone’s life.

InnerSpace Foundation & the IF Prize - Wed. Apr 30, 6pm
SAP, Building D, 3410 Hillview Ave, Palo Alto 94304
details…

With great support from the Accelerating Future People Database, we’re in the process of uploading AGI-08 talks. Thus far, Ben Goertzel’s introductory talk - AI and AGI: Past, Present and Future - has been uploaded, along with a few other.

The First Conference on Artificial General Intelligence
FedEx Institute of Technology, University of Memphis
In cooperation with AAAI, March 1-3, 2008
Sponsored in part by Novamente LLC

“Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.” - I.J. Good (1965)

Since the Singularity Summit 2007, discussion of Novamente, AGI and virtual worlds has percolated rapidly through the media and blogosphere. The following are seven blog posts… including excerpts.
With excellent documentation and photos, Tish Shute (UgoTrade founder) covers much ground in her 3,877 word post, including interview w/ Novamente’s Ben Goertzel during his visit w/ friend and advisor, Prof. Hugo de Garis, in China:

Last week, Goertzel’s startup company Novamente LLC announced their collaboration with Electric Sheep Company to bring artificial intelligence agents to online virtual worlds (see BBC News Coverage). So things are definitely beginning to ramp up. Novamente and Electric Sheep will show off their plans for AI in virtual worlds at the Virtual Worlds Fall Conference and Expo 2007, Oct 10th - 11th, San Jose, CA.Goertzel explained to me some of the reasons virtual worlds such as Second Life have the potential to form very interesting environments for the development of AGI. Most importantly in online virtual worlds, if you roll out virtual babies or pets you also get a huge mass of people to teach them things. You get the opportunity to harness the wisdom of crowds. Many MMOG games have AI in them but games are narrow, not requiring much flexibility or adaptiveness on the part of the AI agents operating in them. The openness of virtual worlds creates many new possibilities for AGI. Also artificial intelligence can be embedded in a variety of embodied agents at a low cost.

Lisa Galarneau’s Terranova Blog,
The Singularity, Virtual Worlds and AI Babies:

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SIAI’s Director of Partnerships, Jonas Lamis, responded to Wall Street Journal’s Lee Gomes’ negative review of the Singularity Summit 2007 (where SIAI / Novamente’s Ben Goertzel presented). In line with Lamis’ response, entrepreneur, futurust and documentary filmmaker, Michael E. Arth, chastised WSJ with the following:

Letter to the Wall Street Journal

Editor,

I must have been at a different Singularity Summit from the one that Lee Gomes wrote about so derisively on September 19th. First of all, the technological singularity gets its name from the metaphor of a black hole, a collapsed star that has such intense gravity that light cannot escape. The technological singularity refers to a fantastical period of time in the near future where things we value will change so profoundly that it is extremely difficult, from our current perspective, to shed light on what will happen. The timing of the singularity depends on whether there is a hard take or a soft take off in the chain of recursively, self-improving, thinking machines that will probably result after we build the first one. (more…)

A question very simply crafted poll I’m asking a few friends to gain a better perspective on the time-frame for when we may see greater-than-human level AI. Results posted below… if you wish to participate, email me (bruce-at-novamente.net) an answer for the following:

[ ] 2010-20
[ ] 2020-30
[ ] 2030-50
[ ] 2050-70
[ ] 2070-2100
[ ] Beyond 2100
[ ] Never
[ ] Prefer not to make predictions
[ ] Other: __

Online sources:

Results thus far for When will AI surpass human-level intelligence?

Update: Aug 18, 2007:

Update: Aug 21, 2007:

Many people have replied Never, so I’ve separated this answer from the replies and have added it to the survey results (above). - Bruce K.

Update: Aug 22, 2007:

Many respondents have asked for my definition of human-level intelligence. Thus, I’d like to defer to Karl MacDorman’s reply below (#13) which refers to humanlike. - Bruce K.

Update: Aug 22, 2007:

Reply #1 by Robert Bradbury

Bruce, I generally think the question is misphrased.

Over the last week I spent a couple of full days relearning sufficient chess that I could finally beat the Gnuchess program under Linux [1]. I personally tired of playing Backgammon when I wrote a program in 1977 that did a relatively good job defeating me. Scientists recently announced improvements to a checkers program so it can now play a perfect game. Two of the best human poker players in the world recently had a hard time defeating a computer program opponent.

So one answer to the question is that in specific fields AI is already far better than HI (esp. average HI). When it comes to laying out millions of transistors in electronic circuits AI has been better than HI for a decade or more. Computers are now quite adept at speech, OCR, voice recognition, face recognition, database searching, limited composition tasks and driving.

I think most people have fallen into the AGI swamp. Minsky pointed out long ago that the human brain is a complex aggregate of subprograms designed for specific functions. In a growing number of specific areas computer programs and the available hardware they can run on can match or exceed common human capabilities now.

If you want to ask more specific question regarding when will computer processing capacity exceed the human brain in a reasonable footprint the answer is before 2010). Petaflops computers are on order or soon will be with IBM & Sun. A tightly coupled network of a few thousand PS3 has the capacity of a human brain (and does a far better job at protein folding simulations).

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The proceedings (edited by Ben Goertzel and Pei Wang) from our 2006 AGI Workshop (sponsored by Novamente) has been published. You can purchase the book or check for the individual papers at the website. Here’s an excerpt from the introduction:

This book contains materials that come out of the Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (AGIRI) Workshop, held in May 20-21, 2006 at Washington DC. The theme of the workshop is “Transitioning from Narrow AI to Artificial General Intelligence.”

In this introductory chapter, we will clarify the notion of “Artificial General Intelligence”, briefly survey the past and present situation of the field, analyze and refute some common objections and doubts regarding this area of research, and discuss what we believe needs to be addressed by the field as a whole in the near future. Finally, we will briefly summarize the contents of the other chapters in this collection.

1. What is meant by “AGI”

“Artificial General Intelligence”, AGI for short, is a term adopted by some researchers to refer to their research field. Though not a precisely defined technical term, the term is used to stress the “general” nature of the desired capabilities of the systems being researched — as compared to the bulk of mainstream Artificial Intelligence (AI) work, which focuses on systems with very specialized “intelligent” capabilities. While most existing AI projects aim at a certain aspect or application of intelligence, an AGI project aims at “intelligence” as a whole, which has many aspects, and can be used in various situations. There is a loose relationship between “general intelligence” as meant in the term AGI and the notion of “g-factor” in psychology [1]: the g-factor is an attempt to measure general intelligence, intelligence across various domains, in humans.

While reading SIAI’s recent Why We Exist post, I came across a link to Michael Anissimov’s research where he finds a 1935 novel passage which makes possible first reference to “AI/robotic recursive self-improvement in fiction” - quoted by Technovelgy:

“You have forgotten your history, and you have forgotten the history of the Machine, humans…”

“On the planet Dwranl, of the star you know as Sirius, a great race lived, and they were not too unlike you humans. …they attained their goal of the machine that could think. And because it could think, they made several and put them to work, largely on scientific problems, and one of the obvious problems was how to make a better machine which could think.

The machines had logic, and they could think constantly, and because of their construction never forgot anything they thought it well to remember. So the machine which had been set the task of making a better machine advanced slowly, and as it improved itself, it advanced more and more rapidly. The Machine which came to Earth is that machine.”

From The Machine, by John W. Campbell
Published by Astounding Science Fiction in 1935

John W. Campbell was born in 1910; he died in 1971. He received a degree in Physics from MIT in 1923, publishing his first stories when still a student. In 1937 he became editor of Astounding Stories and discovered many great talents of sf, including Asimov, Heinlein, Sturgeon, van Vogt and others.

He freely offered his ideas to his writers; Isaac Asimov has credited Campbell with the Three Laws of Robotics.

Appreciation to Campbell on his foresight.

Ben Goertzel (Novamente CEO) explains the Singularity Institute’s AGI R&D Program in this 17 minute video recorded on July 22, 2007 in San Francisco. More Goertzel and Novamente videos can be found here.