Ben Goertzel has been pondering questions of artificial intelligence since he was a teenager. During the past two decades, Goertzel has been developing and perfecting the OpenCOG AI software system. Dr. Goertzel believes that, with sufficient resources and time, OpenCOG could be used to create true machine intelligence. In an effort to expedite the development of OpenCOG, Goertzel has launched a crowdfunding project on indiegogo. This project has the ambitious aim of creating a "Sputnik moment" for the AI field by developing an robot with the proximate intelligence of a child. In an interview with Sander Olson for Next Big Future, Goertzel discusses how the field of AI has changed since 2009, how Artificial General Intelligence could be developed with relatively meager funding, and why the development of machine intelligence may be closer than most people believe.
Ben Goertzel interview (2013)
Question: I first interviewed you in 2009. How have things changed since then, in the world of AGI?
During the past four years, attitudes within the AGI community have changed dramatically. Many individuals and even some corporations now openly claim to be working on AGI related projects. Narrow AI still commands the lion’s share of money, and it is still difficult for an AGI project to garner funding, in either academia or industry. But one can clearly see the burgeoning acceptance of the concept of AGI – and of the notion that general intelligence can be created, potentially in the fairly near term, without resorting to reverse-engineering the brain.
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Ben Goertzel interview (2013)
Question: I first interviewed you in 2009. How have things changed since then, in the world of AGI?
During the past four years, attitudes within the AGI community have changed dramatically. Many individuals and even some corporations now openly claim to be working on AGI related projects. Narrow AI still commands the lion’s share of money, and it is still difficult for an AGI project to garner funding, in either academia or industry. But one can clearly see the burgeoning acceptance of the concept of AGI – and of the notion that general intelligence can be created, potentially in the fairly near term, without resorting to reverse-engineering the brain.
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