Artificial General Intelligence and the Path to CyberImmortality

1. Artificial General Intelligenceand the Path to CyberImmortality Dr. Ben Goertzel, CEO/CSOben@novamente.net240-505-6518

2. Varieties of Immortality Biological Immortality • Potentially achievable via pharmacology or nanotech Cyber-immortality • Immortality via perpetuation of the mind and/or body in a computational medium different from the original one • “Uploading” Various forms of partial immortality • Writing books • Having children • etc. Dr. Aubrey de Grey Immortality Institute Tim Fonseca (Artificial Platelets) MindUploading.org

3. Philosophical Issues with CyberImmortality • Is my upload “me”, or just a clone of me? • This problem may apparently be circumvented by gradual uploading • We must accept the possibility of one “me” branching into multiple experientially genuine me’s

4. Philosophical Issues with CyberImmortality • Self, free will and consciousness are in large part “illusory” • See e.g. Thomas Metzinger, Being No One • Perpetuating these illusions is part of making the human mind immortal • Transcending these illusions and becoming truly transhuman may well be in the cards • To what extent are transcendence and immortality contradictory?

5. Patternist Philosophy • Minds are systems of patterns that achieve goals by recognizing patterns in themselves and the world • Cyberimmortality is about digitally replicating these pattern-sets

6. Approaches to CyberImmortality • Scan the brain and copy the information into a computer • Scan the brain and move the information, bit by bit, into a computer (gradual uploading) • Gather information about an individual’s properties, and create a computer program displaying these same properties • To what extent will that individual’s “unique self” emerge from this computer program? http://www.hddrecovery.com.au/Hard-drive-password-recovery.htm

7. Obstacles to Practical Cyberimmortality • Inadequate brain scanning technology • Inadequate and inappropriate computer hardware • Lack of a detailed understanding of relevant psychological phenomena like self and awareness

8. A Modest Proposal Before messing around with uploading humans via various methods -- why not experiment with “uploading” intelligent software programs first? How much can we change the • Embodiment • Environment • Capability set of an AI program, and still have it feel like the same continuous self?

9. Uses of AI for CyberImmortality • Artificial scientists may help us figure out how to scan brains and build appropriate computer hardware • AI minds may serve as subjects for experimenting with the nature of consciousness, self and mind-transformation

10. Varieties of AI Narrow AI systemsare highly restricted in the types of patterns they can recognize/create Totally general intelligenceis only possible given infinite computational/physical resources Pragmatic Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Systemspossess the capacity to self-reflect and flexibly learn so as to continually expand the scope of patterns they can deal with

11. The first Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (AGIRI.org) Workshop was held May 2006 in N. Bethesda, MD, sponsored by Novamente LLC • www.agiri.org/workshop • IBM has agreed to co-sponsor the next AGIRI.org Workshop - Fall of 2006

12. This edited volume -- the first ever to focus exclusively on Artificial General Intelligence -- is edited by AGIRI/Novamente LLC founders Dr. Ben Goertzel and Cassio Pennachin and contains chapters by leaders of AGI research, at universities, corporations and research institutes around the world.A partial author list includes: -Ben Goertzel (Novamente LLC) -Cassio Pennachin (Novamente LLC)-Marcus Hutter (IDSIA) -Juergen Schmidhuber (ISDIA) -Pei Wang (Temple University) -Peter Voss (A2I2) -Vladimir Redko (Keldysh Institute) -Eliezer Yudkowsky (SIAI) -Lukasz Kaiser (Aachen Univ. of Technology)

13. Ray Kurzweil and some other leading futurists advocate a long-term approach to AGI via brain mapping • Major projects such as IBM’s Blue Brain and Artificial Development’s Ccortex are working in this direction. • However, this approach requires AGI engineers to sit and wait for decades while neuroscientists figure out how to better map the brain, and the computer engineers build better hardware

14. Rather than waiting for the neuroscientists, the Novamente AGI design fills the knowledge gap via appropriate deployment of computer science • This approach may feasibly lead to AGI equaling or surpassing human level intelligence before 2020.

15. Novamente AI Engine ~100K lines of C++ code Design detailed in several hundred pages of mathematical, conceptual and software design documents Coding of overall system ~40% complete

16. Novamente AI Engine Components of the system have been commercially deployed • Biomind OnDemand product for bioinformatic data analysis • ImmPort: NIH Web portal with Biomind/Novamente based analytics on the back end • INLINK language processing system developed for INSCOM (Army Intelligence)

22. Atoms associated in a dynamic “map” may be grouped to form new Atoms:the Atomspace hence explicitly representing patterns in itselfThe “phenomenal self” is one example of a reflexive pattern of this type.

23. Goal For Year One After Project Funding Fully Functional Artificial Infant Able to learn infant-level behaviors "without cheating" -- i.e. with the only instruction being interactions with a human-controlled agent in the simulation world Example behaviors: naming objects, asking for objects, fetching objects, finding hidden objects, playing tag System will be tested using a set of tasks derived from human developmental psychology Within first 9 months after funding we plan to have the most capable autonomous artificial intelligent agent created thus far, interacting with humans spontaneously in its 3D simulation world in the manner of a human infant

24. Acknowledgements The Novamente Team • Bruce Klein – President, Novamente LLC • Cassio Pennachin – Chief Architect, Novamente AI Engine • Andre Senna – CTO • Ari Heljakka – Lead AI Engineer • Moshe Looks – AI Engineer • Izabela Goertzel– AI Engineer • Murilo Queiroz – AI Engineer • Welter Silva – System Architect • Dr. Matthew Ikle’ – Mathematician Dr. Matthew Ikle’ Bruce Klein Dr. Moshe Looks Ari Heljakka Dr. Ben Goertzel Izabela Goertzel 2006 AGIRI.org Workshop Sponsored by Novamente LLC) Cassio Pennachin

25. Thank You Terasem Movement