On 3/18/07, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
If we succeed at creating the first AGI, it will not be because anything
"fell into our hands." It will be because we
a) put in the many years of hard thinking to create a working AGI design
b) put in the many years of hard, often tedious, work to implement, tune
and test it
at a time in history slightly BEFORE the point when many others felt
that a) and b) were worthwhile ways to spend their lives.
Yes, I give you credit for being a pioneer, but that does not guarantee
winning, as you may already know.
The question is whether your work can be duplicated after your initial
success, and how hard is that. Often it is easier to copy than to invent.
Secondly, you seem to think that you possess a secret AGI recipe that is
very hard to crack. This is probably not true, because AGI can be achieved
in a number of ways...
What we have done that is special is to articulate, in detail, a
workable AGI design ;-)
Yes, you have got more details, at this stage, but you're not the sole
propreitor of a workable AGI design. And your advantage will be lost when
some more resourceful players enter the game.
All in all, your strategy should be some *special* move that changes the
resource-determined outcome.
By far the easiest way to recruit MORE talented people to work on
Novamente would be to raise money to pay them! Toward this end we have
been developing a business model for Novamente, oriented toward using
the Novamente AI system to control virtual agents in simulation worlds
(e.g. Second Life, MMOGs, and training simulations such as are used by
government agencies among other potential customers). If we can raise
investment $$ to build a commercial agents-control product based on the
Novamente system, this will enable us to hire more talented people so as
to accelerate our progress. What I like about this business direction
is that it does not entail distraction from the end goal of AGI: what is
needed to provide better and better embodied agents control in sim
worlds, is very close to what is needed for moving toward AGI anyway.
Aside from acquiring $$ to pay people, we of course are open to talented
volunteers who are able to join the NM project without being paid.
Years of experience, however, shows that such people are rather hard to
come by. A deep and difficult project like NM is hard for people to
contribute to on a part-time basis; and not that many people are in a
life-situation enabling them to spend full-time on an AI project without
pay. (Yes, if we were demonstrably just a few small steps away from a
human-level AGI, plenty of people would be willing to quit their jobs,
move back home with mom and dad, and devote 100 hours a week to helping
us finish Novamente. But if we were at that stage, funding would also
be easy to raise from a variety of sources.)
I realize you are in favor of us open-sourcing the Novamente design, but
I continue to have reservations about that approach, for medium-term
AGI-safety related reasons that we have discussed before. I am also
unconvinced that this would lead to dramatically faster progress. As we
have found with the AGISim simulation world project, simply
open-sourcing something does not magically attract talented and
dedicated people to spend a lot of time on it. We have been fortunate
to get some really good volunteers to help with AGISim, but they are
busy people with other fish frying and progress on AGISim has been
pretty slow in spite of these excellent part-time helpers.
IMO AGI-Sim is not a very strategic move, because it is simply one more
thing-that-you-do. From a resource-based view, this can be duplicated.
Example: Jim Clark's Netscape.
Funding is a relatively minor issue. Make the right moves, and funding will
come naturally.
The bottomline is: why should people join NM? I'm interested in joining
your project too, but I'm looking for something that tells me this is the
winning team. Making your architecture more open (perhaps not the whole
software) is a way to convince more people that your ideas are sound. This
is just one suggestion. I don't have all the answers either, just pointing
out the problems we face.
PS -- remember also the history of UNIVAC. Eckert and Mauchly made some
ground-breaking progress in early computing, including the stored-program
concept which somehow was stolen / co-discovered by von Neumann. Later von
Neumann joined IBM and they developed the even more successful system 360.
Note: 360 means "well-rounded" which actually means the same as "universal"
in UNIVAC. Again a prime example of a good idea and much effort being
duplicated and overtaken.
We need some time to sit back and think about the bigger picture...
YKY
-----
This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email
To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to:
http://v2.listbox.com/member/?list_id=303
