Ben Goertzel is a
cognitive scientist,
artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...
researcher, CEO and founder of SingularityNET, leader of the
OpenCog
OpenCog is a project that aims to build an open source software, open source artificial intelligence framework. OpenCog Prime is an architecture for robot and virtual embodied cognition that defines a set of interacting components designed to giv ...
Foundation, and the
AGI
Silver iodide is an inorganic compound with the formula Ag I. The compound is a bright yellow solid, but samples almost always contain impurities of metallic silver that give a gray coloration. The silver contamination arises because AgI is hig ...
Society, and chair of
Humanity+
Humanity most commonly refers to:
* Humankind, the total population of humans
* Humanity (virtue)
Humanity may also refer to:
Literature
* ''Humanity'' (journal), an academic journal that focuses on human rights
* ''Humanity: A Moral History of ...
. He helped popularize the term '
artificial general intelligence
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.
It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fictio ...
'.
Early life and education
Three of Goertzel's Jewish great-grandparents emigrated to
New York from
Lithuania
Lithuania (; lt, Lietuva ), officially the Republic of Lithuania ( lt, Lietuvos Respublika, links=no ), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. It is one of three Baltic states and lies on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea. Lithuania ...
and
Poland
Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...
. Goertzel's father is
Ted Goertzel
Ted George Goertzel (born November 20, 1942), is an Emeritus Professor in the Sociology Department at Rutgers University in Camden, N.J. He is the author and co-author of books and articles spanning from social economy, politics, and conspiracy t ...
, a former professor of sociology at
Rutgers University
Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...
. Goertzel left high school after the tenth grade to attend
Bard College at Simon's Rock
Bard College at Simon's Rock (more commonly known as Simon's Rock) is a private residential liberal arts college in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It is a unit of Bard College, which is located in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
The school ...
, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Quantitative Studies.
Goertzel graduated with a PhD in mathematics from
Temple University
Temple University (Temple or TU) is a public state-related research university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist minister Russell Conwell and his congregation Grace Baptist Church of Philadelphia then called Ba ...
under the supervision of Avi Lin in 1990, at age 23.
Career
Goertzel is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a project combining artificial intelligence and blockchain to democratize access to artificial intelligence.
He was a Director of Research of the
Machine Intelligence Research Institute
The Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), is a non-profit research institute focused since 2005 on identifying and managing potential existential risks from artifi ...
. He is also chief scientist and chairman of AI software company Novamente LLC; chairman of the
OpenCog Foundation; and advisor to
Singularity University
Singularity Education Group (using the public names Singularity Group, Singularity University or SingularityU) is an American company that offers executive educational programs, a business incubator, and business consultancy services. Although ...
.
Goertzel was the Chief Scientist of
Hanson Robotics
Hanson Robotics Limited is a Hong Kong-based engineering and robotics company founded by David Hanson, known for its development of human-like robots with artificial intelligence (AI) for consumer, entertainment, service, healthcare, and researc ...
, the company that created
Sophia the Robot.
Views on AI
Dr. Goertzel is a leading developer of the
OpenCog
OpenCog is a project that aims to build an open source software, open source artificial intelligence framework. OpenCog Prime is an architecture for robot and virtual embodied cognition that defines a set of interacting components designed to giv ...
framework for artificial general intelligence. He has published many technical papers on the OpenCog architecture.
In May 2007, Goertzel spoke at a
Google
Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
tech talk about his approach to creating
artificial general intelligence
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.
It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fictio ...
. He defines intelligence as the ability to detect patterns in the world and in the agent itself, measurable in terms of
emergent behavior
In philosophy, systems theory, science, and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties its parts do not have on their own, properties or behaviors that emerge only when the parts interact in a wider whole.
Emergence ...
of "achieving complex goals in complex environments".
A "baby-like" artificial intelligence is initialized, then trained as an agent in a simulated or virtual world such as
Second Life
''Second Life'' is an online multimedia platform that allows people to create an avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user created content within a multi player online virtual world. Developed and owned by the San Fra ...
to produce a more powerful intelligence. Knowledge is represented in a network whose nodes and links carry probabilistic
truth value
In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values (''true'' or '' false'').
Computing
In some progr ...
s as well as "attention values", with the attention values resembling the weights in a
neural network. Several algorithms operate on this network, the central one being a combination of a probabilistic
inference engine
In the field of artificial intelligence, an inference engine is a component of the system that applies logical rules to the knowledge base to deduce new information. The first inference engines were components of expert systems. The typical expert ...
and a custom version of
evolutionary programming Evolutionary programming is one of the four major evolutionary algorithm paradigms. It is similar to genetic programming, but the structure of the program to be optimized is fixed, while its numerical parameters are allowed to evolve.
It was fir ...
.
The 2012 documentary ''
The Singularity'' by independent filmmaker
Doug Wolens
Doug Wolens is an American documentary filmmaker, writer and producer whose documentary films have touched on various issues from logging (Butterfly) to transhumanism (The Singularity).
Early life
Wolens was raised in Chicago, Illinois. His fat ...
showcased Goertzel's vision and understanding of making artificial general intelligence.
Bibliography
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See also
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Artificial general intelligence
Artificial general intelligence (AGI) is the ability of an intelligent agent to understand or learn any intellectual task that a human being can.
It is a primary goal of some artificial intelligence research and a common topic in science fictio ...
*
Paraconsistent logic
References
External links
Ben Goertzel at arXiv.orgTEDxBerkeley – "Decentralized AI"(video:16min, March 2019)
SingularityNET
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goertzel, Ben
1966 births
American agnostics
20th-century American mathematicians
21st-century American mathematicians
American roboticists
American technology company founders
American people of Brazilian-Jewish descent
Artificial intelligence researchers
Human–computer interaction researchers
American technology writers
Machine learning researchers
Complex systems scientists
Computer graphics researchers
Brazilian people of Jewish descent
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Living people
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Cyborgs
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People from Rio de Janeiro (city)
Brazilian emigrants to the United States
New York University alumni
Temple University alumni
University of Waikato faculty
University of New Mexico faculty
University of Western Australia faculty
City University of New York faculty
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Xiamen University faculty
Singularitarians
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American transhumanists
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