On Apr 6, 2008, at 8:38 AM, Eric B. Ramsay wrote:
If the Novamente design is able to produce an AGI with only 10-20 programmers in 3 to 10 years at a cost of under $10 million, then this represents such a paltry expense to some companies (Google for example) that it would seem to me that the thing to do is share the design with them and go for it (Google could R&D this with no impact to their shareholders even if it fails). The potential of an AGI is so enormous that the cost (risk)/benefit ratio swamps anything Google (or others) could possibly be working on.
You just used the Pascal's Wager fallacy in the context of AGI, congratulations. The cost of investing in AGI is well above "zero", investment resources are most assuredly finite, and the risk of investing in a failure is extremely high -- and many billions of dollars have already been invested despite this.
Or to look at it another way, you are also using a variant of the infamous (and also fallacious) "5% market share" argument.
If the concept behind Novamente is truly compelling enough, it should be no problem to make a successful pitch.
The above statement leads me to believe you have little experience with funding speculative technology ventures of the scale being discussed here. The dynamic is considerably, and rightly, more complicated than this. A truly compelling concept and a dollar will buy you a cup of coffee.
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=98631122-712fa4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
