Hi all, I suppose many of you are aware that I've become involved with the Singularity Institute for AI over the last few months.
It's been a pretty low-key involvement so far: What I did was basically to design for them a Research Program http://www.singinst.org/research/summary [see menu to the left] embodying some research I think will be extremely valuable for pushing forward toward AGI, and that I think is well- pursued in an open, nonprofit context. Once this Research Program actually gets funded, then I will get involved in hiring people to do the research and directing them as they actually conduct it. Nearly all of the research involved in this Research Program is research that would be useful for advancing Novamente, but also has more general value for AGI as a whole; and that I think should be disseminated via open-source software and scientific publications, rather than being kept proprietary. Examples (from the above page) are: -- further development of the AGISim simulated world, an open-source, in-development "playground" for proto-AGIs -- work on scalable probabilistic logic (needed for any pragmatic, logic- based approach to AGI) This new SIAI Research Program is disjoint from Eliezer Yudkowsky's research, which is still going strong, via the ongoing SIAI Research Fellowship that Eliezer possesses. Anyway, the main point of this email is to remind y'all that SIAI is now doing a "$400K matching challenge" fundraising drive. This means that if you donate $X, then some other folks will donate an additional $X, so that SIAI will actually get $2X. And, a new twist is that SIAI now supports **directed donations**. This means that, for example, if you want to donate $X to the Research Program that I have defined for SIAI (and that will be carried out by researchers I select, under my direct supervision), you would simply have to donate money as described on http://www.singinst.org/donate and -- for a PayPal donation, specify in the "Comments" box that the donation is intended for "R&D Program" or "Research Program" -- for a paper-check donation, write "R&D Program" or "Research Program" on the comment line on the check Note that if you direct $X to the Research Program, then the other $X provided by other donors according the "matching challenge" will not necessarily be directed to the Research Program ... but will be put into the SIAI general fund and directed however SIAI management sees fit, to support the whole spectrum of SIAI activities. If you want to help with AGI research but are not an AI scientist or engineer, this is one way to do it. Novamente LLC cannot take investments below the five-figure range at this point; but in a nonprofit context, there is no problem with taking small donations. For the SIAI Research Program, even small amounts of money will be useful ... though [Bill Gates, are you listening??] large amounts are also appreciated ;-) As described on the above-linked page, donations may also be directed to other SIAI programs as well ... e.g. to help with the Singularity Summit II conference. I remind you that SIAI is registered such that donations to them are tax-deductible for US citizens ;-) Thanks, Ben G ----- 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=4007604&user_secret=7d7fb4d8
