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>What I do agree with is this part: Lack of incentives means very little strong AI work is happening Really? OpenAI is a thing. Numenta has been a lovely sca

>What I do agree with is this part: Lack of incentives means very little strong AI work is happening Really? OpenAI is a thing. Numenta has been a lovely scam for VCs for years. I found an "AGI" company just yesterday that actually publishes peer-reviewed research (http://www.maluuba.com/research/ http://www.maluuba.com/research/). There's another one that's kinda cranky but sent a guy to give a talk at MIT CSAIL last October or so (http://www.vicarious.com/ http://www.vicarious.com/). Seems like it's a space where you can pitch yourself as "AGI", but you have to get your revenue from solving real-world machine learning problems. That seems pretty appropriate to me: you have to solve someone's problem to have a business.

AndrewKemendo 10y ago
OpenAI isn't trying to create AGI. They are trying to create "Safe AI" (an impossible oxymoron IMO) and democratize the tools that so far we think might lead to AGI so that AGI is not all in one entity's hands and is safe. Demis is the only one so far that I have seen actually say they want to create AGI - which I why I gave a hat tip to Alphabet in my original post. Numenta, OpenCog et al... all of their founders want to create AGI, but they aren't evangelical - they are focused on creating companies which can move progress forward on NAI. Which by the way makes perfect sense, that's exactly what I do because it's impossible to fund AGI for it's own sake. In fact I NEVER talk to investors about how our goal is in the AGI space. For a million different reasons. Seems like it's a space where you can pitch yourself as "AGI", but you have to get your revenue from solving real-world machine learning problems. In fact it's worse. If you pitch yourself as AGI you'll get 99% of investors to walk away immediately. No what I am saying we are not hearing is this: "The purpose of humanity is to build an Artificial General Intelligence, it's the thing that we should all dedicate our lives to because it's the offspring of humanity and the most important thing any of us will ever contribute to." Nobody is out there beating that drum yet, and it's a shame.
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >Nobody is out there beating that drum yet, and it's a shame. Nobody is beating that drum because it comes off as religious crazy-talk. I see zero reason why it should be our purpose to create any kind of metaphorical species-offspring, especially when you yourself say that any concept of making it safe for us to share a planet with is oxymoronic. That sounds like saying, "our purpose is to build an apocalypse and die for its greater glory". Again, that comes off as religious crazy-talk of the suicidal kind. It seems to me there are entirely sane reasons to work on advanced machine learning and increasingly general AI. That's just not at all one of them.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Yea, well I think that's what it's gonna take.
    - Filligree 10y ago
      In which case I'd rather not have AGI at all.
      - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
        Why? What else are we here for?
        goatlover 10y ago
        To enjoy life? What makes you think there is some grand goal to it all?
        AndrewKemendo 10y ago
        What makes you think there is some grand goal to it all? Well nothing, we get to determine it. According to what you write, your assumption is that the "grand goal" is to "enjoy life." I say, that's probably not it - or rather I don't think so (based on my experience/research, general revealed preferences for humans writ large). So my proposition is that our "grand goal" should be to build AGI.
        inimino 10y ago
        Jesus, man, step outside once in a while.
        AndrewKemendo 10y ago
        I'm curious what assumptions you are making about me.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago
  I can't reconcile these two concepts: "We evolved due to random chance, with no guiding hand", and "The purpose of humanity is..." But you pretty much have to believe the first (our intelligence is just neurons, there is no magic behind the curtain) in order to believe in AGI at all.
  - kobeya 10y ago
    Things can have a purpose without a god being there to give it.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      They can? The way "purpose" was used in the original post, there just about has to be someone there to intend.
  - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
    Existentialism says that because the universe is meaningless you need to create your own meaning. That applies to humanity as well as it does an individual. Right now, Humanity has no "goal" as it is currently with AGI - we haven't figured out a seed goal for AGI yet. In my view we should agree that the meaning for humanity is to create our successor: AGI. This fits into the evolution progression, only it becomes self directed.
    - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
      But by your own argument, that's just a meaning that you made up. Why should the rest of us view it as having any validity whatsoever? Why should the human race decide that that goal is the one they should have, as opposed to, for example, destroying all life on earth? (That's the problem with existentialism - you can pick anything as your meaning.)
      - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
        Well that's my task...to sell it so that people will buy it.
user837387 10y ago
Wait What? Numenta is a scam? This is the first I'm hearing about it. Could you please expand on that assertion? By the way, one of the founders [1 ]of vicarious was also a founder of Numenta. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dileep_George https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dileep_George
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >Numenta is a scam? In the sense that they take large amounts of money from VCs, don't ship a product, don't make a profit, and then clean up their books and start another company eventually, yeah. OTOH, if you're one of their investors, you might have a better look at their business model than me, so I could well be completely wrong. They've never gone public, so what would I know?
  - user837387 10y ago
    Hmmm. Seeing as they've been quiet for a long time my impression was that they simply stopped being viable or relevant, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
  - p1esk 10y ago
    What VCs? As far as I know, Numenta was funded by its founder, Jeff Hawkins, with his own money. More importantly, they never really cared about making a profit. Their main goal has always been reverse engineering the neocortex. And regarding "shipping a product", both production-ready [0], and research [1] codebases are both open source, and being actively worked on. Next time please refrain from making bold claims about companies you know very little about. [0] https://github.com/numenta/nupic https://github.com/numenta/nupic [1] https://github.com/numenta/nupic.research https://github.com/numenta/nupic.research

AndrewKemendo 10y ago

OpenAI isn't trying to create AGI. They are trying to create "Safe AI" (an impossible oxymoron IMO) and democratize the tools that so far we think might lead to AGI so that AGI is not all in one entity's hands and is safe. Demis is the only one so far that I have seen actually say they want to create AGI - which I why I gave a hat tip to Alphabet in my original post. Numenta, OpenCog et al... all of their founders want to create AGI, but they aren't evangelical - they are focused on creating companies which can move progress forward on NAI. Which by the way makes perfect sense, that's exactly what I do because it's impossible to fund AGI for it's own sake. In fact I NEVER talk to investors about how our goal is in the AGI space. For a million different reasons. Seems like it's a space where you can pitch yourself as "AGI", but you have to get your revenue from solving real-world machine learning problems. In fact it's worse. If you pitch yourself as AGI you'll get 99% of investors to walk away immediately. No what I am saying we are not hearing is this: "The purpose of humanity is to build an Artificial General Intelligence, it's the thing that we should all dedicate our lives to because it's the offspring of humanity and the most important thing any of us will ever contribute to." Nobody is out there beating that drum yet, and it's a shame.

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Nobody is out there beating that drum yet, and it's a shame. Nobody is beating that drum because it comes off as religious crazy-talk. I see zero reason why it should be our purpose to create any kind of metaphorical species-offspring, especially when you yourself say that any concept of making it safe for us to share a planet with is oxymoronic. That sounds like saying, "our purpose is to build an apocalypse and die for its greater glory". Again, that comes off as religious crazy-talk of the suicidal kind. It seems to me there are entirely sane reasons to work on advanced machine learning and increasingly general AI. That's just not at all one of them.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  Yea, well I think that's what it's gonna take.
  - Filligree 10y ago
    In which case I'd rather not have AGI at all.
    - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
      Why? What else are we here for?
      - goatlover 10y ago
        To enjoy life? What makes you think there is some grand goal to it all?
        AndrewKemendo 10y ago
        What makes you think there is some grand goal to it all? Well nothing, we get to determine it. According to what you write, your assumption is that the "grand goal" is to "enjoy life." I say, that's probably not it - or rather I don't think so (based on my experience/research, general revealed preferences for humans writ large). So my proposition is that our "grand goal" should be to build AGI.
      - inimino 10y ago
        Jesus, man, step outside once in a while.
        AndrewKemendo 10y ago
        I'm curious what assumptions you are making about me.
AnimalMuppet 10y ago
I can't reconcile these two concepts: "We evolved due to random chance, with no guiding hand", and "The purpose of humanity is..." But you pretty much have to believe the first (our intelligence is just neurons, there is no magic behind the curtain) in order to believe in AGI at all.
- kobeya 10y ago
  Things can have a purpose without a god being there to give it.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    They can? The way "purpose" was used in the original post, there just about has to be someone there to intend.
- AndrewKemendo 10y ago
  Existentialism says that because the universe is meaningless you need to create your own meaning. That applies to humanity as well as it does an individual. Right now, Humanity has no "goal" as it is currently with AGI - we haven't figured out a seed goal for AGI yet. In my view we should agree that the meaning for humanity is to create our successor: AGI. This fits into the evolution progression, only it becomes self directed.
  - AnimalMuppet 10y ago
    But by your own argument, that's just a meaning that you made up. Why should the rest of us view it as having any validity whatsoever? Why should the human race decide that that goal is the one they should have, as opposed to, for example, destroying all life on earth? (That's the problem with existentialism - you can pick anything as your meaning.)
    - AndrewKemendo 10y ago
      Well that's my task...to sell it so that people will buy it.

user837387 10y ago

Wait What? Numenta is a scam? This is the first I'm hearing about it. Could you please expand on that assertion? By the way, one of the founders [1 ]of vicarious was also a founder of Numenta. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dileep_George https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dileep_George

eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>Numenta is a scam? In the sense that they take large amounts of money from VCs, don't ship a product, don't make a profit, and then clean up their books and start another company eventually, yeah. OTOH, if you're one of their investors, you might have a better look at their business model than me, so I could well be completely wrong. They've never gone public, so what would I know?
- user837387 10y ago
  Hmmm. Seeing as they've been quiet for a long time my impression was that they simply stopped being viable or relevant, not with a bang, but with a whimper.
- p1esk 10y ago
  What VCs? As far as I know, Numenta was funded by its founder, Jeff Hawkins, with his own money. More importantly, they never really cared about making a profit. Their main goal has always been reverse engineering the neocortex. And regarding "shipping a product", both production-ready [0], and research [1] codebases are both open source, and being actively worked on. Next time please refrain from making bold claims about companies you know very little about. [0] https://github.com/numenta/nupic https://github.com/numenta/nupic [1] https://github.com/numenta/nupic.research https://github.com/numenta/nupic.research