Category: Articles

AGI, from First Principles

What is AGI? In short, Artificial General Intelligence is the name given to computer systems that replicate the overall cognitive abilities of a smart human. In particular, to capture the unique mental abilities that allow us to cope with novel challenges and to flourish in a wide range of environments. These gifts also enable us understand nature, to develop social systems, […]

The 7 Deadly Sins of AGI Design

The term ‘AGI’ has been badly distorted and abused, be it out of ignorance or for fund-raising purposes. It properly refers to systems that can autonomously learn to perform novel human-level cognitive tasks given limited resources of time and compute; essentially what a smart college graduate could learn by ‘hitting the books’. They could learn to become a skilled programmer, accountant, […]

The Insanity of Huge Language Models

Microsoft is re-commissioning the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant in order to feeds just one of its next generation AI data centers [ref]. Anthropic.ai’s CEO predicts that we’ll soon need models that cost $100 billion [ref]. Sam Altman is seeking $7 trillion to achieve AGI [ref]. Does this make sense? Yes, LLMs will continue […]

INSA: Integrated Neuro-Symbolic Architecture

The Third Wave of AI, a Direct Path to AGI A few years ago DARPA formulated a categorization of past, present, and future approaches to AI called ‘The Three Waves of AI’ (ref). Roughly speaking, this refers to: 1st Wave: Traditional symbolic and logic approaches, including expert systems 2nd Wave: Statistical Big Data neural nets, including […]

Imagine

Imagine. Imagine an AGI teaching itself to be a Ph.D. level cancer researcher. Now imagine making a million copies of this. Imagine a million Ph.D. level cancer researchers chipping away at the problem, pursuing different paths, and effectively coordinating their findings. Realize that AGIs have many advantages over human researchers They cost a lot less […]

What is (Real) AGI?

Let’s start at the beginning. Why do we even need this term? In 1956 when the term ‘AI’ was coined, the ambition was to build machines that can learn and reason like humans: incrementally, conceptually, interactively, in real time. The idea was that having machines that could automate tasks and help solve difficult problems would […]

What is AGI

What is AGI, really? And how do we get there… There’s a lot of confusion regarding ‘AGI’. In 2002 we (Goertzel, Legg, Voss) coined the term and wrote a book (ref) to describe its meaning, and to detail potential approaches to achieving AGI. Unfortunately the term has been much abused recently, often turning into simple […]

Cognitive AI

Cognitive AI is an approach to AI (and AGI) that focuses on, and aims to implement the unique properties of human intelligence — those features that allow us to innovate and solve a wide range of problems in the real world. It stands in stark contrast to AI based on formal logic, and also those exploiting ‘big […]

LLMs are not the Path to AGI

A bold statement. Its validity hinges on the definition of ‘AGI’: “A computer system that can learn incrementally, in real time, by itself, to reliably perform any cognitive task that a competent human can – including the discovery of new knowledge and solving novel problems.” This description aligns with what we had in mind when we coined the term […]

The Criticality of Incremental Learning

Real AGI needs the ability to learn new knowledge and skills incrementally in real-time. Whether AGIs are employed as researchers, workers, personal assistants or some other function, a common requirement is that they are able to adapt to changing situations and requirements on the fly, and to do so autonomously.

We coined the term “AGI” (Artificial General Intelligence) over 20 years ago and have since been steadily moving towards this massively beneficial goal for humanity by leveraging our INSA – Integrated Neuro-Symbolic Architecture which facilitates Real-Time Incremental Autonomous Learning.