Re: A fairly concrete path to the Singularity

From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Sat Apr 28 2001 - 16:24:25 MDT


Ben Goertzel wrote:
>
> > O.k., but I'm not "a skeptic". I could be convinced by
> > considerably less than
> > a complete working system -- but also by significantly more than
> > you've said.
> > (That's not a criticism.)
> >
>
> Understood. There's a 370-page book that describes how our system works,
> and it's currently available only to people who need to see it, and under
> NDA....
>
> Unfortunately, most of our experimentation with various parts of the system
> has ~not~ been systematically recorded. But it's all there in our brains,
> and the code isn't going to run away (yet ;)
>

Does the NDA prohibit those who have seen it from working on similar
approaches independently? If so then it would be poisonous to the
efforts
of others.

Doesn't almost everyone with reasonable technical ability and a desire
to contribute to building such a beast "need to see it"? The reason I
ask this is that I am worried when I see a strong effort toward real AI
held proprietary and subject to the vagaries of corporations, economics
and business manuevering. I have personally seen too much of my own
work end up being the property of some company that either folded and
sold it off or turned it into shelf-ware for either strategic reasons or
simply for reason of not knowing what to do with it.. This could very
well happen to WebMind and much of the fine and crucially important work
that has gone into it.

I consider the painful experiences of such occurrences and the
criticality of producing an SI a strong argument for open sourcing of
concepts and code as much as possible.

- samantha



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