Ben Goertzel sees the coming of Artificial General Intelligence

April 14, 2007 at 10:07 am - Tags: US, Research, Artificial Intelligence, Singularity

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!

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Domo, a work in progress

April 12, 2007 at 9:42 am - Tags: Humanoid Robots, US, Research, MIT

This news release from MIT gives details on Domo, an advanced humanoid robot research project. “A robot that can function in a real human environment”, Domo is “an assistive robot which adapts itself to people and new places”.

Many applications are envisioned:

“A robot like Domo could help elderly or wheelchair-bound people with simple household tasks like putting away dishes. Other potential applications include agriculture, space travel and assisting workers on an assembly line, says Aaron Edsinger, an MIT postdoctoral associate who has been working on Domo for the last three years.”

Following researches conducted for years at MIT (namely on Kismet and Cog), Domo has 29 degrees of freedom and incoportaes dozens of sensors that “make it able to sense when a human is touching it”. Additional details and pictures can be found here.

Image: © MIT

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A robot with morphing capabilities?

April 7, 2007 at 9:26 pm - Tags: US, Research, DARPA

DARPA is seeking “innovative proposals” to develop “chemical robots”. Accordind to the official solicitation, the goal is to create robots with uncommon characteristics:

“soft, flexible, mobile objects that can identify and maneuver through openings smaller than their static structural dimensions; reconstitute size, shape, and functionality after traversal; carry meaningful payloads; and perform tasks.”

Most bloggers speaking about this state that DARPA is trying to create a “Terminator 2″ kind of robot, but I guess we’ll have to wait a little bit longer for that, as the targeted bot should be about 10 cm in diameter (at least during Phase I of this research). Still, DARPA’s solicitation is quite exciting.

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