Ben Goertzel is a

computer scientist A computer scientist is a scientist who specializes in the academic study of computer science. Computer scientists typically work on the theoretical side of computation. Although computer scientists can also focus their work and research on ...

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is the capability of computer, computational systems to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence, such as learning, reasoning, problem-solving, perception, and decision-making. It is a field of re ...

researcher, and businessman. He helped popularize the term

artificial general intelligence Artificial general intelligence (AGI)—sometimes called human‑level intelligence AI—is a type of artificial intelligence that would match or surpass human capabilities across virtually all cognitive tasks. Some researchers argue that sta ...

Early life and education

Three of Goertzel's Jewish great-grandparents immigrated to

New York New York most commonly refers to: * New York (state), a state in the northeastern United States * New York City, the most populous city in the United States, located in the state of New York New York may also refer to: Places United Kingdom * ...

from

Lithuania Lithuania, officially the Republic of Lithuania, 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, bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, P ...

and

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It extends from the Baltic Sea in the north to the Sudetes and Carpathian Mountains in the south, bordered by Lithuania and Russia to the northeast, Belarus and Ukrai ...

. Goertzel's father is Ted Goertzel, a former professor of sociology at

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

. 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 college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. It is part of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudso ...

, 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 university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Philadelphia, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. It was founded in 1884 by the Baptist ministe ...

under the supervision of Avi Lin in 1990, at age 23.

Career

Goertzel is the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a project which was founded to distribute artificial intelligence data via

blockchain The blockchain is a distributed ledger with growing lists of Record (computer science), records (''blocks'') that are securely linked together via Cryptographic hash function, cryptographic hashes. Each block contains a cryptographic hash of th ...

s. He is a leading developer of the OpenCog framework for artificial general intelligence. He once received a grant from

Jeffrey Epstein Jeffrey Edward Epstein ( , ; January 20, 1953August 10, 2019) was an American financier and child sex offender. Born and raised in New York City, Epstein began his professional career as a teacher at the Dalton School, despite lacking a col ...

Sophia the Robot

Goertzel was the Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, the company that created the Sophia

robot A robot is a machine—especially one Computer program, programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions Automation, automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the robot control, co ...

. As of 2018, Sophia's architecture includes scripting software, a chat system, and OpenCog, an AI system designed for general reasoning. Experts in the field have treated the project mostly as a PR stunt, stating that Hanson's claims that Sophia was "basically alive" are "grossly misleading" because the project does not involve AI technology, while Meta's chief AI scientist called the project "complete bullshit".

Views on AI

In May 2007, Goertzel spoke at a

Google Google LLC (, ) is an American multinational corporation and technology company focusing on online advertising, search engine technology, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, consumer electronics, and artificial ...

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 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 a multiplayer virtual world that allows people to create an Avatar (computing), avatar for themselves and then interact with other users and user-created content within a multi-user online environment. Developed for person ...

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''). Truth values are used in ...

s as well as "attention values", with the attention values resembling the weights in a

neural network A neural network is a group of interconnected units called neurons that send signals to one another. Neurons can be either biological cells or signal pathways. While individual neurons are simple, many of them together in a network can perfor ...

. Several algorithms operate on this network, the central one being a combination of a probabilistic inference engine and a custom version of

evolutionary programming Evolutionary programming is an evolutionary algorithm, where a share of new population is created by mutation of previous population without crossover. Evolutionary programming differs from evolution strategy ES(\mu+\lambda) in one detail. All in ...

. The 2012 documentary '' The Singularity'' by independent filmmaker Doug Wolens discussed Goertzel's views on AGI. In 2023 Goertzel postulated that artificial intelligence could replace up to 80 percent of human jobs in the coming years "without having an AGI, by my guess. Not with ChatGPT exactly as a product. But with systems of that nature". At the Web Summit 2023 in Rio de Janeiro, Goertzel spoke out against efforts to curb AI research and that AGI is only a few years away. Goertzel's belief is that AGI will be a net positive for humanity by assisting with societal problems such as, but not limited to,

climate change Present-day climate change includes both global warming—the ongoing increase in Global surface temperature, global average temperature—and its wider effects on Earth's climate system. Climate variability and change, Climate change in ...

Bibliography

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

References

External links

Ben Goertzel at arXiv.orgTEDxBerkeley – "Decentralized AI"
(video:16min, March 2019)
SingularityNET
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goertzel, Ben 1966 births Living people 20th-century American mathematicians 21st-century American mathematicians American agnostics American roboticists American technology company founders American people of Brazilian-Jewish descent American artificial intelligence researchers Human–computer interaction researchers American technology writers Machine learning researchers Brazilian people of Jewish descent American bioinformaticians Jewish agnostics American futurologists Data miners People from Rio de Janeiro (city) Brazilian emigrants to the United States New York University alumni Temple University alumni Academic staff of the University of Waikato University of New Mexico faculty Academic staff of the University of Western Australia College of Staten Island faculty University of Nevada, Las Vegas faculty Academic staff of Xiamen University Singularitarians Cosmists Critics of conspiracy theories American transhumanists