Yesterday we held our second h+ movie night at my apartment. We watched all of "Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and the Singularity" and most of "The Novamente Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)", both featuring Dr. Ben Goertzel. We paused the videos frequently for further discussion.
Keep in mind that in our group we have physics graduate students, biotech entrepreneurs, and spacecraft operations members, among others. None of us are AGI researchers, but all of us are very interested in the topic. The first video is a good introduction for people like us. The second video was much more technical. We will try to finish it at our next movie night in a couple weeks.
Some of us had difficulty seeing the connection between Dr. Goertzel's philosophy of patternism and Novemente's proposed AGI implementation. I don't think any of us had a problem with the philosophy - it sounds like an interesting approach to thinking and the mind - but how you actually create something concrete from this was very unclear. Personally, I think I could only potentially make that conceptual leap after spending a lot of time studying philosophy, computer science, and Novamente's approach. It all sounds good, but I really am not in a position to judge one way or the other. Not that my judgment is necessary
The two biotech entrepreneurs in our group think that we will reach human uploading technology before AGI. They believe that uploading is the "easier" problem to solve. We actually spend a lot of time in our meetings and movie nights discussing uploading (and we should have a presentation in a couple weeks to better inform us about the idea). I personally hold onto the (conceit?) that there is something individual and unique about our self, and that what makes "me" would be lost during destructive uploading, regardless of how close the copy me turned out to be. The uplink supporters in our group say that we are basically a different person when we wake up in the morning, so what is the big deal? Some philosophers even suggest that our sense of continuity is itself a conceit. I'll definitely need more information to keep on top of this interesting topic.
As for AGI, the biotech guys also think this technology may be much more dangerous than uploading. Do you trust an alien mind created from scratch or a transfered human mind with all its evolutionary baggage? We spent a lot of time discussing AGI versus human mind sandboxes and whether or not sandboxes would even be necessary (or might they drive AGI and human minds insane with limitations?)
Pizza, soda, Cheetos, AGI and uploading - what better way to spend a Friday night!?