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Sead Fadilpašić
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Sead Fadilpašić
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In an exclusive interview with Cryptonews Podcast, Ben Goertzel, CEO and Chief Scientist of decentralized artificial intelligence (AI) project SingularityNET, discussed the close connection between AI, crypto, and blockchain and how the emerging intersection of AI and crypto will be the most exciting development in the world over the next few years.
Goertzel talked about AI becoming a new species, much smarter than humans, capable of reprograming its own brain.
He also discussed the major difference between ChatGPT and the decentralized approach to the AI evolution taken by Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).
AI Did Not Emerge Overnight
It is important to keep in mind that artificial intelligence is not a new thing, Goertzel remarked.
While it may appear to the public that it just came onto the scene – given its recent explosion – the industry insiders have been working on it for a long time.
For example, Goertzel wrote his first AI code when he was a teenager in the late 1970s.
Furthermore, the main ideas behind the AI field were present in the ‘60s and the ‘70s, he said.
Therefore, “from my own view, it’s been a pretty continuous growth and progress” ever since.
The main difference between then and now is that previously the world didn’t have the scale of compute and data to feed into the AIs.
As the technology progresses, it opens up ways to execute long-existing ideas.
The introduction of ChatGPT and other large language models (LLMs) has been massive, not just in terms of technological advancement but also public awareness and accessibility.
That said, while amazing, these AI systems are limited and largely controlled by a few big companies.
“ChatGPT and other LLMs are neither the beginning of AI nor are they necessarily the end,” said Goertzel. “There’s the opportunity for the next wave of AI innovation to not be dominated by a few big tech companies, but to grow within the decentralized ecosystem.”
AI That Can Reprogram Its Own Brain
In March this year, SingularityNET, Fetch.ai, and Ocean Protocol made news when they merged to form Artificial Super Intelligence (ASI).
As to what is behind this merger, Goertzel started by explaining that ChatGPT is a so-called Narrow AI because it can’t go very far beyond its training data.
However, an artificial general intelligence (AGI) is an AI that can make giant leaps beyond its programming and go beyond its training, the veteran said.
He added that “what goes beyond an AGI is an AI that can reprogram its own brain at will and achieves levels of creativity, generalization, reasoning, way beyond the human level.”
Therefore, while humans have more general intelligence than ChatGPT or any other AI system today, superintelligence and ASI would go far beyond the human level.
What will likely happen is that humans will build the first AGI, then the first AGI builds the second AGI and it moves on towards superintelligence, Goertzel added.
A Vastly More Powerful Use Case for Crypto World
According to Goertzel, the emerging intersection of AI and crypto is “going to be literally the most exciting development on our planet over the next few years.”
Making super intelligence and AGI a reality is key for the ASI alliance. They are putting various pieces together, aiming to create “the next big thing after LLMs like ChatGPT.”
However, this new system would be launched on a decentralized infrastructure. If ChatGPT had such a massive effect, “imagine something of that level of impact or more,” but on a decentralized blockchain-based platform, Goertzel stated.
This is not only taking the next evolutionary step in AI but also creating a vastly more powerful use case for the crypto world than we’ve seen so far, he argued.
Crypto is now a store of value and a financial speculation instrument, but there is no “kick-ass mainstream use case that we want.” The next evolution of AI could become that use case, said Goertzel.
Hence, the team is looking into ways to launch the next AI evolution on the ASI infrastructure.
Certain useful elements will be launched sooner while the team keeps on working towards this major goal.
Putting LLMs and knowledge graphs together on a decentralized platform can be a toolset that could get a lot of traction with mainstream Web2 and Web3 AI developers.
But this also lays the groundwork for the next stage, Goertzel added. “We’re starting with decentralized LLM plus knowledge graph, then we’ll put more and more AI into the knowledge graph part until that becomes the next level of AGI mind.”
The smarter AI that ASI can roll out on a crypto basis, the bigger the crypto ecosystem will grow. This will then increase token value and bring in more money to put even smarter AI on the crypto basis.
Machines Will Be Smarter Than Humans
The relation of AI and blockchain goes both ways, Goertzel remarked.
AI has many ways to help blockchains do their thing. And cybersecurity is going to be a growing area in this respect.
Utilizing AI can make a super-fast, scalable, and cheap consensus mechanism for decentralized social media or communication of AI agents, he said.
On the other hand, the way blockchain can help AI is even more foundational.
It’s “basically the only existing solution” for not having a few large, powerful parties – primarily big governments and corporations – own and control all the AI in the world, which is running every software and hardware application on the planet.
This is important economically now and may become massively relevant as we move to AGI and superintelligence, Goertzel remarked.
Therefore, he continued, the blockchain becomes a way for the pieces of the servers that are underlying the world’s AI to be owned by various parties that can coordinate without a central controller.
And this brings us to the future of AGI, the veteran said, adding: “I think we are on a near-inevitable path to having machines much smarter than human beings.”
General intelligence is leaps of imagination beyond the current AI. This will effectively be a new species, he opined.
There are many routes to get to AGI, and it may take three or ten years to get there. How long exactly will depend on focus of money and expert human attention on the problem, Goertzel concluded.
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That’s not all.
In this interview, Goertzel also discussed:
- AI supplanting DeFi as the main engine of economic growth within the crypto world;
- multiple stages in the emergence of AI;
- merging Ocean Protocol,Fetch.ai, and SingularityNET into the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance;
- the alliance working full-force with brilliant people and a decent amount of funding on a variety of ground-breaking interrelated components to make the next big thing in AI;
- conquering tech giants with smarter technology – the team already has ‘the seeds for defeating the big tech’;
- the shortest path to artificial general intelligence (AGI).
You can watch the full episode here.
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About Ben Goertzel
Dr. Ben Goertzel leads the SingularityNET Foundation, the enterprise AI firm TrueAGI, the OpenCog Foundation, and the AGI Society.
Additionally, he is the facilitator of the Artificial General Intelligence conference, which has been held annually for over fifteen years.
Goertzel is a highly influential figure in the fields of artificial intelligence, robotics, and computational finance.
Born in 1966, he earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Temple University, USA, dedicating his career to both the theoretical and practical applications of AI.
Goertzel helped popularize the term “artificial general intelligence” and has been a strong advocate for moving the field of AGI.
