This is a big problem. If China was a free nation, I wouldn't have any
qualms with it, but the first thing China will do with AGI is
marginalize human rights. Any nation who censors it's internet
(violators are sent to prisoner/slave camps) and sells organs of
unwilling executed prisoners (more are executed each year in china than
the entire world combined) is not a place I'd like AGI to be
developed. I hope Hugo doesn't regret his decision. You also have to
watch out for copyright violation. They're not going to care if your
project gets stolen, and if you announce that you're close to finishing
your project, I'd have guards posted in the server room. Things could
get scary really quickly.
Josh Treadwell
Ben Goertzel wrote:
Hi,
As a contrast to this discussion on why AGI is hard to fund in the US,
I note that Hugo de Garis has recently relocated to China, where he was
given a professorship and immediately given the "use" of basically as
many expert programmers/researchers as he can handle.
Furthermore, I have strong reason to believe I could secure a similar
position with very little effort...
So, if I just decided to relocate the Novamente project to China, all
of a sudden I could have a couple dozen AI scientists fully funded to
work on the project. Very simple: no more trying to convince investors
or government funding agencies, no more need to do narrow-AI consulting
to make $$ to feed AGI programmers, etc.
I point this out to indicate that the difficulty of funding AGI
develoment is NOT some kind of inevitability related to the perceived
speculative nature of the work -- it is a consequence of the way our
own society and economy is structured, and the specific cultural
history of the US and Europe.
To be honest, I have been mulling over this China possibility a fair
bit lately, but am held back from taking the leap and relocating to
China by a couple factors:
1) my primary narrow-AI project, in the financial domain, appears at
the moment to have nontrivial odds of making me wealthy enough to fund
Novamente development myself, within a couple years
2) I share custody of my kids 50-50 with my ex-wife who lives in
Maryland, and doing shared custody from China would be trickier...
Then of course there are various IP and AGI safety issues related to
the Chinese government, but I'd rather not go into those at the moment
;-)
But it is quite interesting to reflect that, simply by relocating
physically to a different part of the planet and taking a job at a
university there, these funding issues would effectively VANISH all at
once, as they have for Hugo de Garis. All of a sudden, within say 6
months of my relocation, Novamente could start progressing toward
powerful AGI at five times its current speed.
Because, Chinese society right now is willing to take risks on AGI
development that is perceived as speculative, whereas with rare
exceptions, US and European society are not.
-- Ben G
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