Much of this discussion is very abstract, which is I guess how you think about these issues when you don't have a specific AGI design in mind.
My view is a little different. If the Novamente design is basically correct, there's no way it can possibly take thousands or hundreds of programmers to implement it. The most I can imagine throwing at it would be a couple dozen, and I think 10-20 is the right number. So if the Novamente design is basically correct, it's would take a team of 10-20 programmers a period of 3-10 years to get to human-level AGI. Sadly, we do not have 10-20 dedicated programmers working on Novamente (or associated OpenCog) AGI right now, but rather fractions of various peoples' time (as Novamente LLC is working mainly on various commercial projects that pay our salaries). So my point is not to make a projection regarding our progress (that depends too much on funding levels), just to address this issue of ideal team size that has come up yet again... Even if my timing estimates are optimistic and it were to take 15 years, even so, a team of thousands isn't gonna help things any. If I had a billion dollars and the passion to use it to advance AGI, I would throw amounts between $1M and $50M at various specific projects, I wouldn't try to make one monolithic project. This is based on my bias that AGI is best approached, at the current time, by focusing on software not specialized hardware. One of the things I like about AGI is that a single individual or a small team CAN "just do it" without need for massive capital investment in physical infrastructure. It's tempting to get into specialized hardware for AGI, and we may want to at some point, but I think it makes sense to defer that until we have a very clear idea of exactly what AGI design needs the hardware and strong prototype results of some sort indicating why this AGI design will work on this hardware. My suspicion is that we can get to human-level AGI without any special hardware, though special hardware will certainly be able to accelerate things after that. -- Ben G On Sun, Apr 6, 2008 at 7:22 AM, Samantha Atkins <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Arguably many of the problems of Vista including its legendary slippages > were the direct result of having thousands of merely human programmers > involved. That complex monkey interaction is enough to kill almost > anything interesting. <shudder> > > - samantha > > Panu Horsmalahti wrote: > > > > > Just because it takes thousands of programmers to create something as > complex as Vista, does *not* mean that thousands of programmers are required > to build an AGI, since one property of AGI is/can be that it will learn most > of its complexity using algorithms programmed into it. > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > *singularity* | Archives > <http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now> > <http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/> | Modify > <http://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> Your Subscription [Powered by > Listbox] <http://www.listbox.com> > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > singularity > Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now > RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ > Modify Your Subscription: > http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] "If men cease to believe that they will one day become gods then they will surely become worms." -- Henry Miller ------------------------------------------- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
