In the lair of frankenstein
Few real geeks doubt that artificial intelligence will be created. The only question is who, when and how. Probably the most typical is the opinion that it will be created by some large corporation like Google. After all, we hear about the success of corporations. For example, few people are unaware of the Watson program, created by IBM, or Google’s purchase of a number of robotic (and not only ) firms. Much less can be heard about those researchers and projects in the field of strong AI, which are not associated with large corporations. We want to fill this gap a bit by talking about our impression of communicating with Ben Görzel (translation of an article of which was on geektimes) in his laboratory, where his project OpenCog , briefly described in the article , is being developed, and at the same time wondering if such groups have chances to overtake the giants?
It is worth noting that Ben Gertzel is one of the main initiators of the AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) movement, in particular, thanks to him, such collective monographs appeared as “Artificial General Intelligence (Cognitive Technologies)” and “Theoretical Foundations of Artificial General Intelligence”, and Also, international conferences on general artificial intelligence began to take place, which made it possible to somehow consolidate the AGI community. Earlier, Ben Goerzel established firms such as Novamente and Biomind. In general, this person is not just a scientist, but an organizer and a businessman. So why, of all the possible ways, he now chose a way to engage in the OpenCog project with a grant based on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University?
This project is not the only thing he does. He also works on using OpenCog development results in commercial applications, particularly in bioinformatics, for DNA analysis and in predicting financial time series. However, as he told us, he deals with the latter out of necessity, in particular, to provide his children and, if possible, for financial support of future AGI developments, which are his main goal. According to him, this is not the best form of work on AGI, but so far the best one he could achieve. There are more than a dozen people in his group who can work on the project without being distracted by anything else. In addition, he collaborates with the laboratory in Addis Ababa, which on its own initiative joined the development of OpenCog. Being an open source project, OpenCog also has its own distributed community, which contributes to its development.
')
Is it a lot compared to corporations? It may seem not. Indeed, under the leadership of Kurzweil, whom Google was able to lure to himself a couple of years ago, there are six laboratories, one of which, in particular, is headed by Lux - the author of the original version of the genetic programming system MOSES, which is already being developed by the Goertzel team as part of OpenCog. Görtsel himself was repeatedly invited to work at Google, but he consistently refused. According to him, they are not trying to create AGI there. Google redirects the activities of hired researchers, including AGI-enthusiasts, to the goals associated with maximizing the profits of Google in the not too distant future. Yes, often the corresponding developments, such as Knowledge Graph, are positioned as a movement towards a strong AI. But Google is only slightly developing the technologies of a strong AI, and to a much greater extent is concerned with the use and adaptation of these technologies to solve its business problem of information retrieval. We had about the same impression from a conversation with Laurent Orsu ¬– one of the organizers of the AGI conferences, who several months ago switched to working at DeepMind (now a Google division): although he didn’t say that directly, but apparently DeepMind is now degree is engaged in the application of the previously developed technologies to the field of activity of Google.
Thus, Görzel is not interested in moving to a large corporation, since he believes that this will lead to a decrease in the productivity of his movement specifically towards AGI. And this is not just the opinion of a random person, based on general considerations. There are very good reasons for it, although this is still a subjective opinion, to which personal ambitions, for example, can be mixed in.
But is it possible to create a true AI without the resources of corporations? Görzel believes this is possible. Moreover, he plans to do this in a fairly short time, as they announced at the AGI'12 conference. However, some of Görzel’s laboratories call Ben a great optimist and believe that his plans would be implemented within five years with more substantial funding (and the implementation of these plans will lead to a true AI only if the initial premises are correct), and so it will require ten to twenty years.
In addition to limited human resources, there are also some aspects related to hardware. Now OpenCog is a largely symbolic cognitive architecture. However, a true AGI should probably be an incarnated agent. The most direct way to do this is to place AGI in the body of the robot. Now there are some robots in Ben's lab. However, real AGI will require a completely different level of robots. Now OpenCog is more used for virtual agents (game characters), but the game world may not be rich enough to form a full-fledged intelligence. Therefore, for Görtsel it is still an open question whether to seek collaborators for the development of a robotic direction or to consider other ways of creating embodied intelligence based on the information that is on the Internet.
So, it is very difficult for AGI to be purposefully and productively engaged at an industrial level for everyone, including Ben Görtsel. Despite all appearances, corporations, even such as Google, are not directly involved in them, although their activity in the field of applied AI is increasing, and in the future we are not immune to the scenario of creating a real AI in a corporation. Despite the fact that the topic of AGI is becoming increasingly hot, private investment for pure AGI development is also problematic. Ben referred to Dmitri Itskov in this connection, who intersected several times as an example of the fact that it is easier to find funding for work on the immediate achievement of immortality than on AGI (although for AG Ben himself, this is also the path to his own immortality, explaining to investors this path is more likely to succeed than trying to place the human brain into the body of a robot, it turns out to be difficult).
Problems with serious investments in the field of AGI are typical. So, a few months ago, we managed to talk with another AGI-enthusiast - Peter Voss. He said that he had a break of several years in productive work on his cognitive architecture, and only recently he was able to find again the investments to continue, but their volume is very limited. In this sense, Ben managed to create better conditions for his project (and the content side of his project, perhaps, is much stronger).
Work on AGI does not look like a race yet, but rather as a race with obstacles. On different paths, the obstacles are different, and each AGI-enthusiast chooses his own. Who has more chances - time will tell. In the meantime, I would like to wish good luck to projects such as OpenCog, than to corporate development.
It is worth noting that Ben Gertzel is one of the main initiators of the AGI (General Artificial Intelligence) movement, in particular, thanks to him, such collective monographs appeared as “Artificial General Intelligence (Cognitive Technologies)” and “Theoretical Foundations of Artificial General Intelligence”, and Also, international conferences on general artificial intelligence began to take place, which made it possible to somehow consolidate the AGI community. Earlier, Ben Goerzel established firms such as Novamente and Biomind. In general, this person is not just a scientist, but an organizer and a businessman. So why, of all the possible ways, he now chose a way to engage in the OpenCog project with a grant based on the Hong Kong Polytechnic University?
This project is not the only thing he does. He also works on using OpenCog development results in commercial applications, particularly in bioinformatics, for DNA analysis and in predicting financial time series. However, as he told us, he deals with the latter out of necessity, in particular, to provide his children and, if possible, for financial support of future AGI developments, which are his main goal. According to him, this is not the best form of work on AGI, but so far the best one he could achieve. There are more than a dozen people in his group who can work on the project without being distracted by anything else. In addition, he collaborates with the laboratory in Addis Ababa, which on its own initiative joined the development of OpenCog. Being an open source project, OpenCog also has its own distributed community, which contributes to its development.
')
Is it a lot compared to corporations? It may seem not. Indeed, under the leadership of Kurzweil, whom Google was able to lure to himself a couple of years ago, there are six laboratories, one of which, in particular, is headed by Lux - the author of the original version of the genetic programming system MOSES, which is already being developed by the Goertzel team as part of OpenCog. Görtsel himself was repeatedly invited to work at Google, but he consistently refused. According to him, they are not trying to create AGI there. Google redirects the activities of hired researchers, including AGI-enthusiasts, to the goals associated with maximizing the profits of Google in the not too distant future. Yes, often the corresponding developments, such as Knowledge Graph, are positioned as a movement towards a strong AI. But Google is only slightly developing the technologies of a strong AI, and to a much greater extent is concerned with the use and adaptation of these technologies to solve its business problem of information retrieval. We had about the same impression from a conversation with Laurent Orsu ¬– one of the organizers of the AGI conferences, who several months ago switched to working at DeepMind (now a Google division): although he didn’t say that directly, but apparently DeepMind is now degree is engaged in the application of the previously developed technologies to the field of activity of Google.
Thus, Görzel is not interested in moving to a large corporation, since he believes that this will lead to a decrease in the productivity of his movement specifically towards AGI. And this is not just the opinion of a random person, based on general considerations. There are very good reasons for it, although this is still a subjective opinion, to which personal ambitions, for example, can be mixed in.
But is it possible to create a true AI without the resources of corporations? Görzel believes this is possible. Moreover, he plans to do this in a fairly short time, as they announced at the AGI'12 conference. However, some of Görzel’s laboratories call Ben a great optimist and believe that his plans would be implemented within five years with more substantial funding (and the implementation of these plans will lead to a true AI only if the initial premises are correct), and so it will require ten to twenty years.
In addition to limited human resources, there are also some aspects related to hardware. Now OpenCog is a largely symbolic cognitive architecture. However, a true AGI should probably be an incarnated agent. The most direct way to do this is to place AGI in the body of the robot. Now there are some robots in Ben's lab. However, real AGI will require a completely different level of robots. Now OpenCog is more used for virtual agents (game characters), but the game world may not be rich enough to form a full-fledged intelligence. Therefore, for Görtsel it is still an open question whether to seek collaborators for the development of a robotic direction or to consider other ways of creating embodied intelligence based on the information that is on the Internet.
So, it is very difficult for AGI to be purposefully and productively engaged at an industrial level for everyone, including Ben Görtsel. Despite all appearances, corporations, even such as Google, are not directly involved in them, although their activity in the field of applied AI is increasing, and in the future we are not immune to the scenario of creating a real AI in a corporation. Despite the fact that the topic of AGI is becoming increasingly hot, private investment for pure AGI development is also problematic. Ben referred to Dmitri Itskov in this connection, who intersected several times as an example of the fact that it is easier to find funding for work on the immediate achievement of immortality than on AGI (although for AG Ben himself, this is also the path to his own immortality, explaining to investors this path is more likely to succeed than trying to place the human brain into the body of a robot, it turns out to be difficult).
Problems with serious investments in the field of AGI are typical. So, a few months ago, we managed to talk with another AGI-enthusiast - Peter Voss. He said that he had a break of several years in productive work on his cognitive architecture, and only recently he was able to find again the investments to continue, but their volume is very limited. In this sense, Ben managed to create better conditions for his project (and the content side of his project, perhaps, is much stronger).
Work on AGI does not look like a race yet, but rather as a race with obstacles. On different paths, the obstacles are different, and each AGI-enthusiast chooses his own. Who has more chances - time will tell. In the meantime, I would like to wish good luck to projects such as OpenCog, than to corporate development.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/363609/
All Articles