Re: [agi] Why so few AGI projects?

[Shane Legg]

This is a question that I've thought about from time to time.  The conclusion
I've come to is that there isn't really one or two reasons, there are many.

Surprisingly, most people in academic AI aren't really all that into AI.
It's a job.  It's more interesting than doing database programming in
a bank, but at the end of the day it's just a job.  They're not out to
change the world or do anything amazing, it's hard enough just trying
to get a paper into conference X or Y.  It's true that they are skeptical
about whether AI will make large progress towards human level
intelligence in their life times, however I think the more important point
is that they simply don't even think about this question.  They're just not
interested.  I'd say that this is about 19 out of every 20 people in academic
AI.  Of course there are thousands of people working in academic AI
around the world, so 1 out of 19 is still a sizable number of people in total.

Funding is certainly a problem.  I'd like to work on my own AGI ideas
after my PhD is over next year... but can I get money to do that?  Probably
not.  So as a compromise I'll have to work on something else in AI during
the day, and spend my weekends doing the stuff I'd really like to be doing.
Currently I code my AI at nights and weekends.

Pressure to publish is also a problem.  I need results on a regular basis
that I can publish otherwise my career is over.  AGI is not really short term
results friendly.

Another thing is visibility.  Of the academic people I know who are trying
to build a general artificial intelligence (although probably not saying quite
that in their papers), I would be surprised if any of them were known to
anybody on this list.  These a non-famous young researchers, and because
they can't publish papers saying that they want build a thinking machine,
you'd only know this if you were to meet them in person.

One thing that people who are not involved in academic AI often don't
appreciate is just how fractured the field is.  I've seen plenty of examples
where there are two sub-fields that are doing almost the same thing
but which are using different words for things, go to different conferences,
and cite different sets of people.  I bring this up because I sometimes
get the feeling that some people think that "academic AI" is some sort
of definable group.  In reality, most academics lack of knowledge about
AGI is no different to their lack of knowledge of many other areas of AI.
In other words, they aren't ignoring AGI any more than they are ignoring
twenty other areas in the field.

Shane

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