Ben Goertzel, PhD Novamente LLC

1
AGI versus Narrow AI
Ben Goertzel, PhDNovamente LLC Biomind
LLC Artificial General Intelligence Research
Institute Virginia Tech, Applied Research Lab for
National and Homeland Security
2
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

• The ability to achieve complex goals in complex
  environments using limited computational
  resources
• Autonomy
• Practical understanding of self and others
• Understanding what the problem is as opposed
  to just solving problems posed explicitly by
  programmers

3
2006
2007
Post-proceedings of 2006 AGI Workshop (North
Bethesda MD, May 2006) To be published by IOS
Press
4
Narrow AI

• The vast majority of AI research practiced in
  academia and industry fits into the Narrow AI
  category
• Each Narrow AI program is (in the ideal case)
  highly competent at carrying out certain complex
  goals in certain environments
• chess-playing, medical diagnosis, car-driving,
  etc.
• A major lesson from the history of AI is Narrow
  AI success is nearly always of minimal use as a
  stepping-stone toward AGI success

5
Some Existing AI Paradigms
Paradigm Strengths Weaknesses
GOFAI Representation of abstract knowledge Reasoning (short proofs) Pattern recognition Learning Autonomy
Neural nets Pattern recognition Learning Associative memory Perception/action/cognition integration Representation of abstract knowledge Abstract reasoning Learning Autonomy
Evolutionary Programming Pattern recognition Learning of complex procedures Representation of abstract knowledge Abstract reasoning Autonomy
Probabilistic Reasoning Representation of abstract uncertain knowledge Reasoning (short proofs) Hypothesis formation Autonomy Pattern recognition
Subsumption Robotics Autonomy Learning Perception-action integration Cognition Representation of abstract knowledge
6
Examples of Narrow AI
Deep Blue Cant learn to play a new game based on
a description of the game rules DARPA Grand
Challenge Software cant even learn to drive
different types of vehicles besides cars (trucks,
boats, motorcycles) Google Cant answer
questions. Whatever happened to AskJeeves?
7
Examples of Narrow AI From My Own Recent Work
Biomind ArrayGenius software for recognizing
patterns in gene expression data Doesnt
interpret the patterns it finds in the context of
the literature and the totality of relevant
online quantitative data RelEx software for
mapping English sentences into semantic
structures Doesnt do reasoning to resolve
semantic ambiguity in a context-appropriate way
8
How to Create AGI?

• AGI will not be achieved by incrementally
  general-izing narrow-AI apps
• To achieve AGI, we need to go back to basics
• We need to create an artificial baby of sorts
  (though not necessarily a human-like baby it
  may be a baby with architecture and algorithms
  sculpted via computing, cognitive and systems
  science rather than neuroscience)
• We need to teach the baby well
• And then, the practical applications will come
  (and oh boy, will they come!!)