From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Thu Jun 27 2002 - 16:42:41 MDT
Who will launch the Singularity?
Rafal,
History shows that throwing money at a problem is not always the best way to
solve it!
This is why these days, major software firms tend to effectively outsource
most of their software R&D to startups -- acquiring those startups that have
produced something clearly valuable.
There is a lot of power in a small, tightly-knit team that has deep common
understanding. Especially in the domain of software. (And yes, I
understand that AGI is not just a software problem, but still, much of the
practical work of making an AGI is software work.) Large companies and
government labs have a lot of trouble replicating the innovation that the
best independently-working small teams produce.
I think that when gov't or major companies get into the AGI game, it may
well be by
-- funding academic research groups, or
-- acquiring stakes in, or fully acquiring, small firms doing innovative
research
ben
-----Original Message-----
From: owner-sl4@sysopmind.com [mailto:owner-sl4@sysopmind.com]On Behalf Of
Smigrodzki, Rafal
Sent: Thursday, June 27, 2002 4:14 PM
To: 'sl4@sysopmind.com'
Subject: Who will launch the Singularity?
Stephen Reed [mailto:reed@cyc.com]
Not only do I have the opposite opinion, I believe that as the evidence
mounts that an AGI is possible, the government - and in particular the US
government will take the leading role.
### I guess that Stephen is right - the US government will be able to run
circles around indepdendent SAI efforts in the rase to the Singularity, by
virtue of the massive financial and organizational resources it will throw
at it (shortly before SAI becomes feasible based on academic efforts),
although a big software company might be the dark horse.
It is possible that the Friendliness learning process forces a single
ethical structure as the outcome, predicated on the external referents of
Friendliness, the panhuman layer. However, there might be local minima
surrounding this part of the "ethical configuration space", and an AI might
be launched towards one of them. Hopefully, not the one requiring a pledge
of allegiance.
Rafal
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