On Mar 16, 2008, at 9:14 AM, Eric B. Ramsay wrote:
It took Microsoft over 1000 engineers, $6 Billion and several years to make Vista. Will building an AGI be any less formidable? If the AGI effort is comparable, how can the relatively small efforts of Ben (comparatively speaking) and others possibly succeed? If the effort to build an AGI is not comparable, why not?
Yeah, what kind of fool would believe something as complex and interesting as a tree could grow from an insignificant and unremarkable looking seed. There is no evidence that AGI is a complex problem per se.
Few people would define the developments task as hiring hundreds of engineers to do things like write device drivers and apps for defective Chinese silicon so that little Billy's stuffed purple dinosaur with a USB cable coming out its ass can dance along with Hannah Montana music videos being streamed from YouTube with built-in DRM as a heroic last ditch effort to contain the spread of that insipid "music" while your email-client-and-dishwashing-machine forwards your porn collection to everyone in your address book in the background because a Russian hacker^H^H^H^H^H^H programmer might find that funny^H^H^H^H^H useful.
All very necessary if you are building a Microsoft operating system product, but superfluous to the development of AGI or even operating systems generally. A lot of functional operating systems have been developed by a single individuals, and most have traditionally been written by small teams.
J. Andrew Rogers ------------------------------------------- singularity Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/11983/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/11983/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=4007604&id_secret=96140713-a54b2b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
