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

framework for artificial general intelligence. He has published many technical papers on the OpenCog architecture. Ben Goertzel -

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

. 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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References

External links