Ben Goertzel is Chief Scientist of financial prediction firm Aidyia Holdings and robotics firm Hanson Robotics and an American author and researcher in the field of artificial intelligence.
In this video interview, he talks about the development of AI. He believes that it is possible for humans to create the first AI in a few decades. He uses the term artificial general intelligence (AGI). "So it seems that it's going to be a laborious path to get to the first human level AGI. I don't think it will take centuries from now but it may be decades rather than years."
"...once you get a human level AGI you can teach this human level AGI math and programming and AI theory and cognitive science and neuroscience. This human level AGI can then reprogram itself and it can modify its own mind and it can make itself into a yet smarter machine. It can make 10,000 copies of itself, some of which are much more intelligent than the original. And once the first human level AGI has created the second one which is smarter than itself, well, that second one will be even better at AI programming and hardware design and cognitive science and so forth and will be able to create the third human level AGI which by now will be well beyond human level."
"On the other hand once you get to a human level AGI I think you may see what some futures have called a hard takeoff where you see the intelligence increase literally day by day as the AI system rewrites its own mind. And this – it's a big frightening but it's also incredibly exciting. Does that mean humans will not ever make any more inventions? Of course it doesn't. But what it means is if we do things right we won't need to. If things come out the way that I hope they will what will happen is we'll have these superhuman minds and largely they'll be doing their own things. They will also offer to us the possibility to upload or upgrade ourselves and join them in realms of experience that we cannot now conceive in our current human forms. Or these superhuman AGIs may help humans to maintain a traditional human-like existence."
