From: Ben Goertzel (ben@goertzel.org)
Date: Mon Jul 31 2006 - 17:58:16 MDT
IMO all these things (data, hardware) are close to irrelevant -- the
only thing that matters is having a viable design for an AGI, and
having resources to implement it in software. If you have this, and
you implement your AGI, then odds are you can ally with someone who
has computing power and data.
If Google uses their vast $$ to hire creative AGI researchers, maybe
they really will win the race to AGI --- but anyway, their computing
power and data stores will just be conveniences along the path, the
key thing will be if they fund a team of AGI researchers and give them
leeway to spend a lot of time theorizing and playing with hardware and
data rather than just working directly on immediately-product-related
projects...
So far Google does NOT seem to be following this pattern, in their
hiring. They are swallowing up computational linguists but not AGI
researchers. If I see them following this pattern I will definitely
let you know!!
-- Ben
On 7/31/06, Joel Pitt <joel.pitt@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 8/1/06, Philip Goetz <philgoetz@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Data, in any case, matters a lot. Although the difference between
> > having the internet, and the internet plus a lot of scanned in books,
> > might not be crucial. I think having a lot of journal articles might
> > be more important. The web contains, for the most part, only basic
> > information on any given discipline. Textbooks contain another level
> > of detail. Journal articles contain a yet-higher level of detail.
>
> Note that most journal articles are available online if you want to
> pay for them. Even articles dating back to the 1900's have been OCRed.
>
> And textbooks, since they are quite pricey and needed by many
> undergraduates, have been a prime candidate for sharing as pdf's on
> p2p networks.
>
> I currently have 3500 fictional books, 2500 computer tech books, and
> 600 or so textbooks (covering math, physics, and biology) in my text
> repository. Of course if I find any particular book that is useful or
> I enjoy - then I inevitably purchase a legit copy.
>
> (Information wants to be free ;P)
>
> --
> -Joel
>
> "Wish not to seem, but to be, the best."
> -- Aeschylus
>
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