Artificial General Intelligence 2009 Conference Videos Up on Vimeo

Sure, there are narrow AI programs that can detect credit card fraud, or help a plane land safely, or even translate languages. But where's the computer that thinks it's a person? Where's the human-like artificial intelligence we were promised in movies? Probably in Ben Goertzel's lab. Human-like AI, called artificial general intelligence (AGI), is a passion that Goertzel shares with research and industry leaders around the world. They've started the AGI conference, which had its second annual meeting in March of this year. Videos from that meeting are finally up on Vimeo, and the AGI 09 schedule is here to help you make sense of their order. I encourage you to watch all 36 or so, it's like a free ticket to the conference. You probably don't have the time though, so I included one of my favorites after the break - Robert Swain using many scifi references to explain his attempt at AGI, a program called H.E.L.E.N. K.L.R.

Keith Kleiner had a great interview with Goertzel about AGI in February. In it, Goertzel explains that the time for AGI is either ripe, or getting close to being ripe. Narrow AIs (those intelligent programs which only accomplish a single task or kind of task) are becoming increasingly sophisticated and it may only be a matter of time before one becomes so amazingly successful in its field that it sparks interest in a return to creating a general artificial intelligence. At least, that's Goertzel's opinion. Yet after watching him speak in Transcendent Man and at its premier I tend to believe in what he says. He's a smart dude.