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John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

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Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#21

I don't understand how he could contribute to the field of AGI research from home, by himself, and maybe with his son. It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

Everything I've ever read about Carmack suggests he'll do his best on his own at home. Much of this work can be done on reasonable hardware, and he's always been really good at getting a lot out of reasonable hardware. Further, if he needs enormous compute resources, he can get it at any of several cloud providers.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#23

I hope he'll go the hybrid symbolic and neural network way (causal and statistical), instead of just statistical. AGI needs a type system... I hope I'll achieve AGI before him but it's nice to know there's some real competition! (because, reader, there are almost 0 researchers seriously trying to achieve AGI in a not totally bullshit way. Only opencog and Cyc comes to mind).

Where and how are you working on AGI? Are you at opencog or Cyx?

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#24

I don't understand how he could contribute to the field of AGI research from home, by himself, and maybe with his son. It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

Might be a little burnt out from the "cutting-edge team" at Oculus who painted him into a corner with technology that could never work, as it made every user sick.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#26
i say this with respect and humility, but i am very surprised at the naivete with which John addressed the subject of AGI. he is so casual about it -- not only the idea of working on it but also the idea of it existing at all. he seems oblivious to the gravity of that discovery. it is not just "very valuable," it will be earth shattering and probably wipe out humanity. and its his side-project. and his son will help out.

John is the perfect representation of what is wrong with peoples attitude toward AGI. aloof and naive.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#28
John Carmack seems like a guy that would've made fundamental contributions to science, had he been born a century before.

Computer science now occupies the place physics once did, in its impact on moving the world forward.

Best of luck to him, I look forward to seeing what he produces!

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#29

I don't understand how he could contribute to the field of AGI research from home, by himself, and maybe with his son. It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

It might make sense for him to join a team like DeepMind, but we could guess that the "working from home by himself" bit was a lifestyle change he wouldn't compromise on.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#30

I don't understand how he could contribute to the field of AGI research from home, by himself, and maybe with his son. It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

I think many people expect that a lot of the missing "special sauce" for AGI (if anyone can figure it out at all) is going to be something for which massive GPU power isn't a key factor.
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