In a short and mind-blowing essay published a few days ago, “Artificial General Intelligence: Now is the Time“, Ben Goertzel explains why Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) may exist “sooner than you think”. In his introduction, he states that:

“I believe that the creation of a superhumanly intelligent AI system is possible within 10 years, and maybe even within a lesser period of time (3-5 years). Predicting the exact number of years is not possible at this stage. But the point is, I believe that I have arrived at a detailed software design that is capable of giving rise to intelligence at the human level and beyond.”

Giving a few updates on his startup, Novamente, whose goal is to develop advanced AI systems, he suggests that this kind of research could be boosted if more people were pursuing the same objective:

“If the US government created an ‘AI Manhattan Project’—run without a progress-obstructing bureaucracy, and based on gathering together an interdisciplinary team of the greatest AI minds on the planet—then we would have a human-level AI within 5 years. Almost guaranteed, assuming Novamente or some other viable design were adopted. It is a big project, but not nearly as big as building, say, Windows Vista.”

Then he explains the “two paths” that could lead to AGI, details a few noticeable projects as well as the possible risks implied by AGI and concludes:

“One of these years, one of these AGI designs—quite possibly my own Novamente system—is going to pass the critical threshold and recognize the pattern of its own self, an event that will be closely followed by the system developing its own sense of will and reflective awareness. And then, if we’ve done things right and supplied the AGI with an appropriate goal system and a respect for its human parents, we will be in the midst of the event that human society has been pushing toward, in hindsight, since the beginning: a positive Singularity.”

The whole piece is definitely worth reading!