Not a single one of our current investors (>dozen) or potential investors
have used AGI lists to evaluate our project (or the competition)

 

Peter Voss

a2i2

 

From: Terren Suydam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:25 PM
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list

 



This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't
necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I
don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a
budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If
I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind
of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list,
to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may
be able to articulate such criticism far better than me.  Obviously the same
goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to
see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed
journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv).

Terren

--- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

From: Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM


Terren,

I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision
makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to
wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets
of real intellectual interest!!!

-- Ben G

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:



One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or
some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and
watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully)
intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund.
This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to
those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be
valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more
tightly-focused forum as well.

--- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

From: Terren Suydam <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list


To: agi@v2.listbox.com

Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM

 



Hi Ben,

I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed
focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of
the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But
the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among
competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since
you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a
situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent
blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point
Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your
frustration). 

For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably
says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new
insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I
would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-)
I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you
made.

Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your
perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be.
This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are
there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up
here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research.

Best,
Terren


--- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

From: Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM


Hi all,

I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list.

It seems to me there are two types of conversations here:

1)
Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current
computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by
moderately-sized groups of people

2)
Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is
impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special
characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called "complex systems
problem", or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and
quadrillions of dollars, or whatever

Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2.

It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ...
certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry.   

But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what
approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to
engineer an AGI system.

Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is
impossible, that would be important.  But that never seems to be the case.
Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and
opinions in this regard.  People are welcome to their own intuitions and
opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about
why AGI is impossible.

One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on
**how to make AGI work**.

If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the
impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off
topic** by definition of the list purpose.

Potentially, there could be another list, something like "agi-philosophy",
devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about
whether AGI is possible or not.  I am not sure whether I feel like running
that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very
often.  I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle
possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical
arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard.

One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI,
could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI
philosophical discussion.   Which, I add, almost never has any new content,
and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics
arguments ... "mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved" ...
"no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done" ... etc.)

What are your thoughts on this?

-- Ben





On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion
on
> this list.
>
> However, I don't think discussions of the form "I have all the answers,
but
> they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha" are particularly
useful.
>
> So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has
probably
> met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP.
>
> However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic
> or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread.
>
> -- Ben

If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about
whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some
self-control and refrain from doing so.

I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean
that he has never said anything that might be useful.

My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some
direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am
working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the
algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not,
was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself.  I
wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution
would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the
unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as
rational evidence in support of the theory that the Lord helped me
with the theory.

Although I am skeptical about what I think Colin is claiming, there is
an obvious parallel between his case and mine.  There are relevant
issues which he wants to discuss even though his central claim seems
to private, and these relevant issues may be interesting.

Colin's unusual reference to some solid path which cannot be yet
discussed is annoying partly because it so obviously unfounded.  If he
had the proof (or a method), then why isn't he writing it up (or
working it out).  A similar argument was made against me by the way,
but the difference was that I never said that I had the proof or
method.  (I did say that you should get used to a polynomial time
solution to SAT but I never said that I had a working algorithm.)

My point is that even though people may annoy you with what seems like
unsubstantiated claims, that does not disqualify everything they have
said. That rule could so easily be applied to anyone who posts on that
list.

Jim Bromer



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Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Research, SIAI
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Director of Research, SIAI
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first
overcome "  - Dr Samuel Johnson



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