Agreed. Thankfully - despite the different weights on motivators - we're all motivated to create an AGI. And the "why" is much more important than the "how".
For the record, I believe that OpenCog is a great idea - and it may possibly work. If not directly - certainly any off shoots from it would not have happened without OpenCog. When I sounded negative about the funding: I'm fearful of the gov't turning its nose up (pardon my English expressions - I can never get them right) at AGI because of projects such as Cyc. How many 10s of millions have they thrown at a "common sense" path to intelligent agents. Cyc just does not make sense to me - even as a non-scientist - it just goes against my intuition of what a likely path to achieving AGI. Well, the gov't will get fed up of funding these things. But there are always people with more money than places to put it (productively - with decent enough potential returns) - and so when you (or others) get close ... yeah ... you'll have money thrown at you, so you can complete it sooner than later. I am very optimistic that we'll get there - or else, I would not be spending my time reading about this field, going to conferences, or taking courses to fill in some of the basic, required, knowledge that I currently do not possess. What a great time to be alive! ~Aki On Tue, Mar 25, 2008 at 11:40 AM, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Aki, > > > Even as a pure scientist, you can > > accomplish more in research by producing wealth, than depending on gov't > > grants. I say gov't grants because private investment is probably years > > away from now. The topic of financing got a lot of attention at AGI 08. > > > > Well, if you're an AGI researcher and believe that government funding > isn't > going to push AGI forward ... and that unfunded or lightly-funded > open-source initiatives like > OpenCog won't work either ... then there are two approaches, right? > > 1) > You can try to do like Jeff Hawkins, and make a pile of $$ doing something > AGI-unrelated, and then use the ensuing $$ for AGI > > 2) > You can try to make $$ from stuff that's along the incremental path to AGI > > > I'm trying approach 2 but it has its pitfalls. Yet so of course does > approach 1 -- > Hawkins succeeded and so have others whom I know, but it's a tiny minority > of those who have tried... being a great AGI researcher does not > necessarily > make you great at business, nor even at narrow-AI biz applications... > > There are no easy answers to the problem of being "ahead of your time" ... > yet it's those of us who are willing to push ahead in spite of being > out of synch > with society's priorities, that ultimately shift society's priorities > (and in this case, > may shift way more than that...) > > -- 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/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > -- Aki R. Iskandar [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- 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=98558129-0bdb63 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
