Notes on Brains

http://www.novamente.net/

A company created by Dr. Goertzel, its main goal is "strong AI".

The basic idea is to dig for patterns using a bayesian optimization algorithm (a heuristically improved genetic algorithm). Patterns are cloned, mutated, and tested. Good patterns are kept and associated with weights. These weights control how much "attention" each pattern later receives.

Later, patterns are connected into a hypergraph, which is a graph, but with special edges that may point to more than two vertices, and be of various types. One edge type indicates that a vertex A is a special case of vertex B; another says that several vertices are similar.

The actual system is not implemented yet (the articles on the web site claim that the system is somewhere between 20% and 60% complete).

In my opinion, another case of a highly oversold system whose actual capabilities are not even clear to its designer, given that it's not implemented yet.

Dr. Goertzel has a web site goertzel.org, and is an author of a variety of essays. One essay has the following title: "Encouraging a Positive Transcension: AI Buddha versus AI Big Brother, Voluntary Joyous Growth, the Global Brain Singularity Steward Mindplex, and Other Issues of Transhumanist Ethical Philosophy". It actually makes sense once you start reading it.

Dr. Goertzel also co-founded a company called Intelligenesis, later renamed Webmind, Inc.