AGI does not need promoting. AGI could potentially replace all human labor, currently valued at US $66 trillion per year worldwide. Google has gone from nothing to the fifth biggest company in the U.S. in 10 years by solving just a little bit of of the AI problem better than its competitors.
We should be more concerned about the risks of AGI. When humans can make machines smarter than themselves, then so can those machines. The result will be an intelligence explosion. http://mindstalk.net/vinge/vinge-sing.html The problem is that humans cannot predict -- and therefore cannot control -- machines that are vastly smarter. The SIAI ( http://www.singinst.org/ ) has tried to address these risks, so far without success. This really is a fundamental problem, proved in a more formal sense by Shane Legg ( http://www.vetta.org/documents/IDSIA-12-06-1.pdf ). Recursive self improvement is a probabilistic, evolutionary process that favors rapid reproduction and acquisition of computing resources (aka intelligence), regardless of its initial goals. Each successive generation gets smarter, faster, and less dependent on human cooperation. Whether this is good or bad is a philosophical question we can't answer. It is what it is. The brain is a computer, programed through evolution with goals that maximize fitness but limit our capacity for rational introspection. Could your consciousness exist in a machine with different goals or different memories? Do you become the godlike intelligence that replaces the human race? -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----- 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=8660244&id_secret=59760992-d9caac