Intelligence and Empathy

Ben Goertzel, noted scientist, author, futurist and pioneer in the field of Artificial Intelligence, is today’s featured guest. Topics he discusses include: Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), the singularity, transhumanism, human immortality and how long he expects to live, and why (like your host) he is a founding member of the Order of Cosmic Engineers.

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.’

Hosted by Stephen Euin Cobb, this is the August 13, 2008 episode of The Future And You. [Running time: 74 minutes]

MP3

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Posted by  on  08/15  at  10:24 AM

Hi My comment is on brain platform mimicking and how i reason to convince my self to act or behave, without checking constantly & logically my value system. Prologue:Impressions Strange to be able to monitor your own thoughts by conscious effort - im under the impression that i've done that very thing and feelt the need of an automatic system to regulate and "drive" me, almost but also the evaluation and reward system kicking in just by thinking and predicting possible R&P;- it seems as though these systems developed independently in evolutionary perspective together with other systems and are largely modulated by basal ganglia inhibitory and motor -operations that have not been yet deciphered- My notion is that the brain is the first of its kind intelligence type tissue--- Stressing tissue--- and a basic notion that since there was no foresight in brain design but just selection the robustness of the brain is remarkably unique. I am not certain since we just comment on these things but i find myself agreeing with Jeff Hawkins- forget about building the whole brain and concentrate on cortex. www.numenta.com see the simplest most difficult problem solved by some of those applications there- Regards

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