Technology is completely changing the way we live our lives, and the incredible brains behind such work carry an enormous responsibility to ensure that what they create leads to a more compassionate, cohesive and sustainable society.
This is why I’m really looking forward to welcoming back one of the most relevant and essential thinkers on the planet today, Dr. Ben Goertzel. I am a cross-disciplinary scientist, futurist, author and entrepreneurwho has spent the best part of his working life focused on creating benevolent superhuman artificial general intelligence (AGI).
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In fact, Ben has been credited with popularizing the term AI in our mainstream thinking and alongside this, he also explores the potential of natural language processing, cognitive science, data mining, machine learning, computational finance, bioinformatics, virtual worlds swear gamingwith the mission to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) to areas like medicine, blockchain, robotics, the media, finance, Arts, music and much more.
He has published a dozen scientific books, 150 technical papers, and numerous journal articles, making him one of the world’s foremost experts in this rapidly expanding field.
However, Ben also concedes there are risks in building a machine that’s capable of learning anything and everythingincluding how to reprogram itself to become an order of magnitude more intelligent than any human.
“There’s a number of risks and dangers with AGI. One of them that’s gotten a lot of media attention is that AGI will run amok and annihilate humanity and take over the universe. It’s entirely possible; you can’t rule it out.”
But, Ben points out that a rather more likely scenario is the risk that selfish people will use AI to exert their own greed and control over other people. It’s a fascinating conundrum, and there is so much to consider, something that Ben has spent more time than most thinking about.
In 2017, I founded SingularityNet with the goal of creating a decentralized, democratic, inclusive and beneficial AGI which has become the world’s leading decentralized AI marketplace.
At SingularityNET, Ben’s goal is to create an AGI that is not dependent on any central entity, is open to anyone and not restricted to the narrow goals of a single corporation or even a single country.
The platform is an open and decentralized network of AI services made accessible through the blockchain where developers publish their services to the network, and can be used by anyone with an internet connection.
“Just like Bitcoin is decentralized money, SingularityNET aims to be decentralized AI processing power.”
Alongside all of this, Ben also serves as Chair of the futurist nonprofit Humanity+ and as Chief Scientist of the AI firms Singularity Studio, Rejuve, SingularityDAO swear Xcelerando Media.
As Chief Scientist at Hanson Robotics, Ben led the software team behind the globally recognized Sophia robot and he was also the brains behind Sophia’s little sister Grace.
Ben truly believes that our focus should be on building AI systems that make the world a more compassionate, more just, and more sustainable place right now and moving forward in the future.
I can’t wait for this conversation, Ben has a brilliant mind and so much knowledge. He may also help us better understand what our future looks like, the impact of AGI, and how this technology will change our world, but it’s a topic that often raises more questions than answers.
“The idea that we can really know with any certainty or predict with any certainty whether a super AGI is going to bring love and benefit to humans and other sentient beings or is going to decide that we’re sort of inefficient in the use of mass energy. We just can’t know that. Any prediction we make has a very wide confidence interval and a very small degree of certainty. That doesn’t mean we can’t or shouldn’t act in a way that we estimate has the greatest possible benefit because what else can we do? Our own ignorance is profound.“
Be sure to tune in as this is a conversation you don’t want to miss.