To: Jeffrey Epstein[jeevacation@gmail.com]
From:  on behalf of Ben Goertzel 
Sent: Sat 9/5/2009 9:33:47 PM
Subject: Catch-22 ... & videos

It's kind of a Catch-22, isn't it?

A: Why don't you have amazing results to show me?

B: Because I haven't had funding to pay a team to implement my ideas

A: How do you expect to get funding if you don't have amazing results to show? ;-p

On a more positive note, if you take 5 minutes and look at the first two videos linked from here

http://www.novamente.net/example/

you will see some of what we do have working -- an AI system that controls an agent in a virtual world, mapping what it sees and the text messages it received into nodes and links in its memory ... and then making linguistic interpretations and learning new behaviors based on this.

We're making progress, step by step, not just in theory but in practice.

Please note that even given all the masses of $$ put into the human genome project and follow-ups, gene therapy has not yet paid off. AGI is not the only field that requires time and money to achieve things.

ben