Ben Goertzel on Charity

XiXiDu

Artificial general intelligence researcher Ben Goertzel answered my question on charitable giving and gave his permission to publish it here. I think the opinion of highly educated experts who have read most of the available material is important to estimate the public and academic perception of risks from AI and the effectiveness with which the risks are communicated by LessWrong and the SIAI.

Alexander Kruel asked:

What would you do with $100,000 if it were given to you on the condition that you donate it to a charity of your choice?

Ben Goertzel replied:

Unsurprisingly, my answer is that I would donate the $100,000 to the OpenCog project which I co-founded and with which I'm currently heavily involved. This doesn't mean that I think OpenCog should get 100% of everybody's funding; but given my own state of knowledge, I'm very clearly aware that OpenCog could make great use of $100K for research working toward beneficial AGI and a positive Singularity. If I had $100M rather than $100K to give away, I would have to do more research into which other charities were most deserving, rather than giving it all to OpenCog!

What can one learn from this?

The SIAI is not the only option to work towards a positive Singularity
The SIAI should try to cooperate more closely with other AGI projects to potentially have a positive impact.

I'm planning to contact and ask various experts, who are aware of risks from AI, the same question.

Alexander Kruel asked:

What would you do with $100,000 if it were given to you on the condition that you donate it to a charity of your choice?

Ben Goertzel replied:

Unsurprisingly, my answer is that I would donate the $100,000 to the OpenCog project which I co-founded and with which I'm currently heavily involved. This doesn't mean that I think OpenCog should get 100% of everybody's funding; but given my own state of knowledge, I'm very clearly aware that OpenCog could make great use of $100K for research working toward beneficial AGI and a positive Singularity. If I had $100M rather than $100K to give away, I would have to do more research into which other charities were most deserving, rather than giving it all to OpenCog!

What can one learn from this?

The SIAI is not the only option to work towards a positive Singularity
The SIAI should try to cooperate more closely with other AGI projects to potentially have a positive impact.

I'm planning to contact and ask various experts, who are aware of risks from AI, the same question.

I don't know much about AI specifically, but I do know something about software in general. And I'd say that even if someone had a correct general idea how to build an AGI (an assumption that by itself beggars belief given the current state of the relevant science), developing an actual working implementation with today's software tools and methodologies would be sort of like trying to build a working airplane with Neolithic tools. The way software is currently done is simply too brittle and unscalable to allow for a project of such size and complexity, and nobody really knows when and how (if at all) this state of affairs will be improved.

With this in mind, I simply can't take seriously people who propose a few years long roadmap for building an AGI.

And I'd say that even if someone had a correct general idea how to build an AGI (an assumption that by itself beggars belief given the current state of the relevant science), developing an actual working implementation with today's software tools and methodologies would be sort of like trying to build a working airplane with Neolithic tools.

This is the sort of sentiment that has people predict that AGI will be built in 300 years, because "300 years" is how difficult the problem feels like. There is a lot of uncertainty about what it takes to b... (read more)

3ferrouswheel15y

Well, if you bothered looking at our/OpenCog's roadmap you'll see it doesn't expect AGI in a "few years". What magical software engineering tools are you after that can't be built with the current tools we have? If nobody attempts to build these then nothing will ever improve - people will just go "oh, that can't be done right now, let's just wait a while until the tools appear that make AGI like snapping lego together". Which is fine if you want to leave the R&D to other people... like us.

0lukeprog15y

We agree on that point, I just didn't have the balls to say it. :)

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