Re: Singularity: A rock 'em, shock 'em ending soon?

From: Woody Long (ironanchorpress@earthlink.net)
Date: Tue Jan 17 2006 - 11:26:42 MST


> [Original Message]
> From: Richard Loosemore <rpwl@lightlink.com>
> To: <sl4@sl4.org

> jdocheff@law.harvard.edu wrote:
> > After reading the conversation on sl4 and other forums, I contacted the
two
> > chairman of the PIBOT company (Rick Geniale Enterprises) who were
listed as
> > participants at the 2005 Accelerating Change conference at Stanford, and
> > requested a private presentation of PIBOT for my group. The response
was
> > professional in nature, in sharp contrast to the website, and they were
willing
> > to schedule a demonstration in early June, and suggested that an Italian
> > translator would be handy.
> >
> > I was wondering if any members of this list were at the 2005 Acc. Change
> > conference and may have had the opportunity to meet or hear from Messrs.
> > Bertini and Melonaro about PIBOT. I'm highly skeptical, but if there
in fact
> > is an Italian team willing to set up private demonstrations later this
year,
> > followed by public conferences in Toulouse, Oslo, and Tokyo, then I'm
willing to
> > keep an open mind and invite them to explain themselves in a clearer
manner than
> > one finds on their website.
> >
>
> What about we set up a conference call with them and ask some technical
> questions? Should be possible to ask questions of a general nature that
> do not compromise their IP, but which at the same time reveal whether or
> not they actually understand the field well enough to do what they claim
> to have done.
-------------------------------------------

> Your cautious response prompted me to go back to their website for a
> second look. I'm sorry: to anyone with any appreciation for the
> complexity of intelligent systems, the claims made there are just plain
> silly. "Ontological representations"? "N-level ontological
> meta-architecture"? Oh dear.
>
> People who make promises like that often do seem very professional on
> the phone. But when you start asking them questions of a technical
> nature, the word output rate starts to go up, and they become strangely
> reluctant to give up their conversational turn, lest maybe you ask
> questions about the answer. Analyse the stream of words afterwards and
> you will find it remarkably content-free.
> Hey ho.
> Richard Loosemore.
>
-------------------------------------------

Yes this is a startling claim, especially for builders of such conscious
machines or "Real AI" such as am I. The world seems to be suddenly changing
quickly, and where before I felt like I had plenty of time, now it appears
time is quickly growing short. Here is a quote from their website, stating
I believe their central claim ...

"Rick Geniale Enterprises Corp. is the company that has realized PIBOT, the
**first ever existed "Real AI"** in the human history on the Earth Planet.
...
Wherever inside this web site there is a reference to the concept of "Real
AI", that concept describes an enormous set of software algorithms that,
taken in its vastness and entireness, is able to manifest a series of
complex abilities that belong to any intelligent human being. Such
abilities includes mainly: general intelligence, "good sense",
autoconsciousness, autonomy, cognition, perception, decision, action."

Many people refer to these humanlike, intelligent machines as conscious
machines. The major and (brand new) scholarly website for machine
consciousness is
http://www.machineconsciousness.org/ operated by Owen Holland at the Univ.
of Essex ( http://cswww.essex.ac.uk/staff/holland.htm. ) He works in
conjunction with Igor Aleksander who of course developed the Five Axioms of
Consciousness. (
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/science/story/0,12996,1029052,00.html )

>From the Guardian article ...
Holland and Aleksander have been given the biggest ever grant to build a
"conscious robot". The work will not only bring the scores of intelligent,
self-aware machines that populate science fiction a step closer, it could
also provide valuable clues on how human consciousness develops. ...
"Consciousness is perhaps the last remaining mystery in understanding what
it is to be human," said Owen Holland, who will lead the work at Essex
University. "By attempting to build physical systems which can produce a
form of artificial consciousness, we hope to learn more about the nature of
consciousness."

A leading journal for machine consciousness is the Journal of Consciousness
Studies ( http://www.imprint.co.uk/jcs.html ).

So this is a small glimpse the current state of the art for machine
consciousness. My point is, whether we call it a conscious machine, "Real
AI," strong AI, or AGI, we are all talking about the same class of
phenomenon.

So here is where it gets interesting because PIBOT claims to be the **first
ever existing Real AI.** Well, that makes three groups that I am aware of
making this claim for the **first ever humanlike, intelligent machine.**
One of them is me, as the List knows. Another well-organized and
interesting contender is the Rosens at Machine Consciousness Inc. (
http://www.mcon.org/ ). They too are planning a big 2006 roll out, as am I
and PIBOT. So the ground is starting to shake. The Rosens claim, as we all
do, to have invented the first humanlike, intelligent "conscious machine"
as proven by their 2003 patent.

So maybe we should gather together a list of all the Contenders claiming to
have built the first ever humanlike, intelligent machine, which some call
Real AI, strong AI, AGI, or machine consciousness -
1. Artificial Lifeforms Lab LLC - my company, with a 2005 US patent pending
(60/730340) for a conscious machine called a droid, being an android if
human shaped or a metadroid if non-human shaped. In both cases they exhibit
humanlike intelligence, so that we get odd forms of artificial life such as
the "talking dog" and the "flying man."
2. Machine Consciousness Inc. - a company with a 2003 patent for "machine
consciousness"
3. PIBOT - a company with a 2005 claim of building the ** first ever "Real
AI" **

If anyone knows of any other Contenders I sure would like to know ...

Ken Woody Long
http://www.artificial-lifeforms-lab.blogspot.com/



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