[ExI] Ben Goertzel at The Future and You

[Giu1i0 Pri5c0]

http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/ben_goertzel_at_the_future_and_you/

Ben Goertzel, noted scientist, author, futurist and pioneer in the
field of Artificial Intelligence, was the featured guest of the August
13, 2008 Episode of The Future and You. Topics he discusses include:
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the singularity, transhumanism,
human immortality and how long he expects to live, and why (like the
show's host Stephen Euin Cobb) he is a founding member of the Order of
Cosmic Engineers. The Future and You (Wikipedia) is an award-winning
podcast hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb. The show's host interviews a
variety of authors, scientists, celebrities and "pioneers of the
future" as to what they believe both the near future and distant
future will be like for individuals as well as for humanity in
general.

Highlights of the interview include: The mechanism of human empathy
seems to have been identified, and so can be reproduced in AI; even AI
that is radically different in its thinking from human beings. Doctor
Goertzel explains that this empathy is not based on emotion, and he
emphasizes that he does not want to create an AI which is governed by
its emotions.

He stresses that the human mind does not qualify as a completely
'General Intelligence' but lies somewhere on the spectrum between AGI
on one end and 'Narrow AI' on the other. This is one of several
reasons why he does not expect AGI to be achieved by mimicking the
workings of the human brain.

He describes how our brains fool us into believing that we understand
our actions and decisions when we don't. And why modeling an AI too
closely on the human brain might make it too, vulnerable to false
notions.

He also says, 'I think virtual worlds are going to be absolutely
critical to the development of Artificial General Intelligence.' As
well as 'Right now connecting AI's to virtual worlds is probably the
best way to get an AI to have a general human-like embodied
experience.'