Ben Goertzel at The Future and You

Ben Goertzel, noted scientist, author, futurist and pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence, was the featured guest of the August 13, 2008 Episode of The Future and You. Topics he discusses include: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the singularity, transhumanism, human immortality and how long he expects to live, and why (like the show’s host Stephen Euin Cobb) he is a founding member of the Order of Cosmic Engineers. The Future and You (Wikipedia) is an award-winning podcast hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb. The show’s host interviews a variety of authors, scientists, celebrities and “pioneers of the future” as to what they believe both the near future and distant future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in general. See also the coverage at IEET.

Direct link to the MP3 podcast

Highlights of the interview include: The mechanism of human empathy seems to have been identified, and so can be reproduced in AI; even AI that is radically different in its thinking from human beings. Doctor Goertzel explains that this empathy is not based on emotion, and he emphasizes that he does not want to create an AI which is governed by its emotions.

He stresses that the human mind does not qualify as a completely ‘General Intelligence’ but lies somewhere on the spectrum between AGI on one end and ‘Narrow AI’ on the other. This is one of several reasons why he does not expect AGI to be achieved by mimicking the workings of the human brain.

He describes how our brains fool us into believing that we understand our actions and decisions when we don’t. And why modeling an AI too closely on the human brain might make it too, vulnerable to false notions.

He also says, ‘I think virtual worlds are going to be absolutely critical to the development of Artificial General Intelligence.’ As well as ‘Right now connecting AI’s to virtual worlds is probably the best way to get an AI to have a general human-like embodied experience.’

Posted by G.P. on 08/14 at 04:28 AM
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