Hi Mike,
> P.S. I also came across this lesson that AGI forecasting must stop (I used > to make similar mistakes elsewhere). > > "We've been at it since mid-1998, and we estimate that within 1-3 years from > the time I'm writing this (March 2001), we will complete the creation of a > program that can hold highly intelligent (though not necessarily fully > human-like) English conversations, talking to us about its own creative > discoveries and ideas regarding the digital data that is its world....Of > course, "1-4 years from real AI" and "1-3 years more to fully self-modifying > AI" are very gutsy claims, similar to other claims that have been made (and > not fulfilled) throughout the history of AI. But we believe that, due to the > combination of advances in computer hardware and software with advances in > various aspects of cognitive science, real AI really now is possible - and > that we know how to achieve it, and are substantially advanced along the > path to this goal." > http://www.goertzel.org/books/DIExcerpts.htm I'd like to note that at that time I was working with a team of about **40** full-time R&D staff focused on nothing but AGI. On April 1, 2001, the company hosting that team (Webmind Inc.) shut its doors. Who knows what we might have achieved had that level of dedication actually continued for 4-7 more years? Our codebase had some problems, and some of our ideas at that point were inadequately specified. But we were moving in the right direction, and my progress since that point has been significantly slower due to having less than 1/10 the team-size devoted to AGI. The real stupidity underlying that prediction I made, in early 2001, was my naivete in not realizing how suddenly the dot-com bubble was going to burst. The prediction was conditional on the Webmind AI team continuing in the form it existed at that time; but as it happened, the creation and maintenance of that sort of AGI R&D team was an epiphenomenon of the temporary dot-com bubble. -- Ben G ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=95818715-a78a9b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
