Hi all, On 5/21/07, Bob Mottram <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
The SIAI videos which are up on google so far look ok. I didn't know that they were actually trying to *build* an AI, as opposed to just raising the generally relevant issues.
Just to be clear: At the moment there is no AGI project in the engineering or detailed-design phase being carried out under the aegis of the SIAI. This may be a good opportunity to clarify the current state and future intentions for R&D at SIAI. What is going on at SIAI (a small organization) right now is pretty much two things: 1) raising and exploring the generally relevant issues, as Bob says ... in particular issues related to ethics, AGI and Singularity 2) fundamental theoretical work on AGI, aimed at one day being able to start a concrete AGI engineering project founded on sound mathematical and ethical principles Both of these are, of course, very important things. If the current fundraising drive succeeds, a third, closely related strand of work will start: 3) developing open software tools of use to AGI engineers generally; and potentially (but not necessarily) of use to SIAI's future in-house AGI engineering projects A few months ago SIAI asked me to adopt the (very part time, so far) role of Director of Research -- which basically meant to formulate a Research Program for SIAI spanning the 3 areas above, complementing and going beyond their current and excellent in-house research program conducted by Eliezer Yudkowsky and his colleagues. (As an aside, Novamente's President, Bruce Klein, has also been helping out SIAI on the "outreach" side, in particular with organization of the 2007 Singularity Summit which I think is shaping up into a pretty nice event, see http://www.singinst.org/events to sign up for notification when more details are available.) To see what the SIAI Research Program is about, see http://www.singinst.org/research/summary (and explore the links on the left side of the page). Once sufficient funding is achieved, I will then be charged with staffing and coordinating the Research Program. Now, about SIAI and AGI engineering.. There is certainly an option that, in future, the work of Eliezer Yudkowsky or some other not-yet-hired SIAI researcher will lead to an in-house SIAI AGI engineering project. I know that Eliezer is working toward that goal, though according to a deep and difficult path involving great ethical care and mathematical rigor. (His plan, as I understand it, is not to start working on AGI engineering until he has at least reasonably sound mathematical reasons to believe his AGI will be beneficial to humans once created and taught. He would not be content with having strong intuitive reasons to believe in the future beneficialness of his AGI; nor with a plan of experimenting with a pre-human AGI to understand its properties so as to better come to an understanding of its likely degree of beneficialness. If I have mis-stated his perspective I am sure he will correct me ;-) There is also an option that, in future, SIAI will wind up working very closely with university or industry research groups who are doing their own AGI engineering (such as, for example, Novamente LLC, A2I2, Stanford AI Lab or Self-Aware Systems, to name just a few groups who have informal relationships with SIAI already). And, there is not necessarily a contradiction between SIAI eventually doing its own AGI engineering, and SIAI partnering with other groups doing their own AGI engineering. As an example, if in future SIAI pursued its own in-house AGI approach based on Eliezer's approach, but also partnered with Novamente LLC ... this would not pose any obvious problems since the two approaches are quite different in nature and orientation. My own company Novamente LLC does not at this point have any formal relationship with SIAI, but the possibility of crafting such a relationship has been discussed. I think such a relationship makes sense in principle, since at this stage Novamente LLC does not have resources to focus as much attention on ethical issues as SIAI does. Hypothetically, one could see SIAI serving as a sort of "virtual ethics department" for AGI projects whose leaders recognize the central importance of AGI ethics and would thus value the chance to work with a group (SIAI) that has devoted so much effort just to thinking about AGI ethics. The touchy thing with this kind of arrangement, of course, is the IP issues. But for AGI projects that are academic or relatively open in their approach to IP, it would seem potentially workable. Anyway, I hope this email has helped to clarify the current state and future intentions of SIAI AGI R&D. Questions are welcome! Thanks Ben G ----- 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/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
