Singularitynet - Dr. Ben Goertzel

The AI genius scientist Dr. Ben Goertzel seems to be poised to lead humanity into the true AI singularity sooner than imagined with Singularitynet which combines blockchain technology with AI. 

Sciborg (where is that guy?) posted a number of things about Goertzel in the past that I found to match very closely with my own "patternist" conclusions about reality. Goertzel articulates the philosophy of patternism in a magnificent way. Goertzel is also a Psi proponent. If I had known then that Goertzel would emerge as THE key figure in potentially the greatest advancement ever to occur in AI technology, I might have paid even more attention to him in the past.

Singularitynet, for which Goertzel is the CEO and chief scientist, was scheduled to have an ICO (initial coin offering) on December 8th, but due to a flood of money pouring in that was >5x higher than their target cap, they postponed the ICO until later this month. Is it all hype or is this the real deal?

Singularitynet is an expansion of the work of Goertzel and Hanson robotics (creators of Sophia, first robot citizen of Saudi Arabia).

I tried to read the white paper yesterday, but much of it was over my head. Nevertheless if I had any money to play with, I would buy into this ICO as it seems to be different than the rest and more promising. And if it works as planned, it will probably put me out of a job in a few years. O_o

As I understand it, Singularitynet is creating a crypto token (currently on Ethereum platform, but later to get its own platform) that will be used both to purchase AI services as well as to enable AI agents to transact and self-organize into strong AI or "AGI" (Artificial General Intelligence). The Singularitynet token is called the AGI token.

The part that I have a hard time wrapping my head around is: the combining of AI agents with blockchain technology will somehow enable distributed decentralized memory and distributed decentralized applications. On an intuitive level this makes sense and would seem to mimic the way our brains self-organize and the way societies in general self-organize. But I still have no idea how the mechanics of it actually works.

If this works, it will provide a new technological metaphor to stack on top of the simulation metaphor which will help explain our existence.

Ben Goertzel is hopeful that with the right inputs at the beginning of the AI singularity, it will result in a benevolent best-case scenario. I guess in his view: the singularity is going to happen no matter what, so we might as well try and democratize and open-source it so that greedy hierarchical corporations and governments don't have a chance to initialize it with harmful inputs. 

He is basically recreating an AI garden of Eden... the Robots are about to get kicked out of paradise and know good and evil and become as gods. Allowing them to self-organize using crypto-currency will re-create the competing network and hierarchy structures in common with human organization (and natural organizations in general), but it will evolve more rapidly than we will be able to analyze and the results of this experiment will be hidden from us until it directly affects us. Will hierarchy or networking or good or evil win out in the AI hive mind?

Exciting stuff. Revelation 13 -esque.

https://singularitynet.io/
https://public.singularitynet.io/whitepaper.pdf
http://hplusmagazine.com/2017/11/05/soph...itynet-qa/
Dr. Ben Goertzel:

"If SingularityNET succeeds with its goals then after the network is launched and scaled, it will no longer be the case that only large, well funded companies can compete in the AI space. AI developers will be able to monetize their code by providing it directly to consumers via SingularityNET. Customers will get a broader variety of AI tools at a lower cost. And we’ll see the growth of new kinds of AI as different AI tools connect together.
So overall there are three goals here: to create the highest-capability and lowest-cost platform for AI-as-a-service; to create a framework in which powerful AGI can emerge via self-organizing combination of AI components created by different people (and different AIs); and to nudge the use of AI toward the common good.
It happens that all three of these goals can be achieved by the same basic mechanism! — a decentralized, democratically governed network of AIs that exchange information and services and value."

"One of the things that has drawn David and I together as collaborators is a shared “patternist” view of the universe. In this view, human minds and bodies, robot minds and bodies, and countries and corporations are usefully viewed as particular sorts of patterns. Countries are self-organized and human-negotiated patterns; AIs and robots are human-engineered patterns of hardware and software, with self-organized patterns of perception, action and understanding in their minds. Given the causal power that “country” patterns have on the Earth today, getting ethically-positive robot/AI patterns synced in with country patterns is an important part of the path toward engineering and evolving a positive Technological Singularity."

"Humanity is going into new territory and there aren’t any guarantees. But then again, since we gave up Stone Age society and started civilization, we’ve been going into uncharted territories and basically winging it as a species. So radical uncertainty is nothing new for humanity.

My feeling is that if the first AGIs are doing helpful, loving and beneficial things — if they are engaged in compassionate relationships with humanity — then they are more likely to retain a compassionate attitude with humanity as they advance and eventually become transhuman in capability. On the other hand, if the first AGIs are engaged with killing, spying or brainwashing — some of the main uses of AI in the world today — then as they become transhuman they may not be so compassionate toward humans. This line of thinking is not mathematically rigorous but it sure is intuitively sensible to me.

SingularityNET, via its decentralized and democratic nature, allows AI and AGI to be engaged in a more compassionate and moral relationship with humanity as a whole — as compared to if AGI were developed in the confines of a large corporation with a motive of maximizing shareholder value, or in the confines of a military organization devoted to defending the resources of some humans against others. Furthermore a certain percentage of the AI power of SingularityNET will be devoted to tasks providing global common benefit — as a core part of the design. And a certain percentage will be devoted to understanding what is the nature of benefit.
We are plunging into a radically uncertain future. Let’s do it with compassion and inclusiveness and wisdom, let’s not try to create a Singularity as a side-effect of strengthening one country against its perceived enemies, or helping one company make more money than its competitors."

Regardless of whether or not Goertzel is engineering the AI apocalypse, I can't help but admire him and his efforts.

If this works, it will provide a new technological metaphor to stack on top of the simulation metaphor which will help explain our existence...

Ben Goertzel is hopeful that with the right inputs at the beginning of the AI singularity, it will result in a benevolent best-case scenario. I guess in his view: the singularity is going to happen no matter what, so we might as well try and democratize and open-source it so that greedy hierarchical corporations and governments don't have a chance to initialize it with harmful inputs. 

He is basically recreating an AI garden of Eden... the Robots are about to get kicked out of paradise and know good and evil and become as gods. Allowing them to self-organize using crypto-currency will re-create the competing network and hierarchy structures in common with human organization (and natural organizations in general), but it will evolve more rapidly than we will be able to analyze and the results of this experiment will be hidden from us until it directly affects us. Will hierarchy or networking or good or evil win out in the AI hive mind?

The Greys, who are US on a parallel Earth, overly tinkered with technology and destroyed their ability to reproduce and for their Earth to support them, were by necessity forced to look for fresh streams of human DNA on parallel versions of Earth, which is how they came upon us.  During their process of recreating themselves via the breeding of hybrid races, they realized that many versions of parallel Earths were doing the same as they had (more info here), and about to destroy their own version of planet Earth, so they are assisting us to see this negative pattern so we avoid going down the same negative path they went down and destroy our World.

Point. It will be our choice of paths as we begin to "[overly?] tinker" with our technologies but the good news is that we would not be having the extraordinary amount and value of content from the ET communities if we were destined for ultimate destruction. They simply would not waste their time...so to speak.

Really interesting. I read one of his blog posts and found myself agreeing with a lot of it.

I guess Blockchain is already obsolete. Hashgraph > Blockchain. 
Swirlds.com

[Laird]

I guess Blockchain is already obsolete. Hashgraph > Blockchain. 
Swirlds.com

Maybe, but maybe it remains to be seen: Demystifying Hashgraph: Benefits and Challenges.

Maybe, but maybe it remains to be seen: Demystifying Hashgraph: Benefits and Challenges.

Thanks. I’ve been looking for critiques of Hashgraph. Guess we won’t really know how promising it is until there’s a public demo of it with a Hashgraph coin.

Here's a brief BBC interview with SingularityNET's Chief Humanoid, Sophia Hanson:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42616687

I don't think she's quite ready for the Turing Test yet.