Quotes

• The Singularity Summit is the premier conference on the Singularity. As we get closer to the Singularity, each year's conference is better than the last.

  – Ray Kurzweil
  CEO, Kurzweil Technologies

  

• Artificial Intelligence is probably the most important technology in humanity's future. Now is the time to be looking closely at its benefits and risks.

  – Peter Thiel
  President, Clarium Capital

  

• – Upper East Side, Manhattan

  

• – Inside Kaufmann Hall

  

• – Outside the Historic 92nd St. Y

  

Main menu

• 2009 Summit
  • Overview
  • Intro Video
  • What is the Singularity?
  • Reading List
  • Community Video
  • Past Summits
  • About Us
• Program
• Registration
• Logistics
• Media
  • News Releases
  • Press Pass
  • Banners
  • Images
  • Logos
  • Buzz
  • Spread the Word
• Partners
• Community
  • Login
  • Profile
  • Search
• Blog

Pathways to Beneficial Artificial General Intelligence: Virtual Pets, Robot Children, Artificial Bioscientists, and Beyond

10:25-10:50 am, October 3

There are almost surely many different routes to the goal ofSingularity-enabling, beneficial artificial general (AGI). In this talk I present some of the foundational concepts of contemporary AGI theory; and review the open-source OpenCog project, which is aimed at the creation of beneficial AGI with intelligence at the human level and beyond, and has near-term applications in game AI, robotics, natural language processing and other areas. I then discuss two promising, complementary pathways to advanced, beneficial AGI: via emulating the developmental path of human children in virtual or physical humanoid robots; and via creating artificial scientist-assistants that gradually assume more and more of the roles of human scientists. The former pathway is illustrated via recent work using OpenCog to control virtual pets and humanoid robots; the latter pathway is illustrated via work using machine learning and language processing technology to aid with life extension research.

Biographies: Ben Goertzel

Dr. Ben Goertzel is CEO and Chief Scientist of AI firm Novamente LLC, a company focused on creating powerfully intelligent NPC's for online games and virtual worlds. He is also CEO of bioinformatics firm Biomind LLC, and Director of Research of the nonprofit Singularity Institute for AI.

Dr. Goertzel is the originator of the OpenCog open-source AGI framework, as well as the proprietary Novamente Cognition Engine AGI system. A research faculty for 8 years in several universities in the US and Australasia, he remains active in the academic AI community. He is the Chair of the Steering Committee for the Artificial General Intelligence conference series, and was the Conference Chair for AGI-09 which was held in March 2009 in Washington DC. He currently serves on the Board of the World Transhumanist Association.

Dr. Goertzel has authored eight technical monographs in the computing and cognitive sciences, published by leading scientific publishers, most recently Probabilistic Term Logic, published by Springer in 2008; and also edited four technical volumes. He has also published over 80 research papers in journals, conferences and edited volumes, in disciplines spanning AI, mathematics, computer science, cognitive science, philosophy of mind and bioinformatics; and has developed two AI-based trading systems for hedge funds in Connecticut and San Francisco. AI software created by his teams at Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC has been used in numerous government agencies and corporations.