Ten Years To the Singularity If We Really Really Try: ... and other Essays on AGI and its Implications

Ray Kurzweil has projected the date for a Technological Singularity as 2045. AI researcher Ben Goertzel believes it could potentially happen much sooner, if appropriate attention and resources are focused on the right R&D projects. What current technologies are most likely to lead to the rapid advent of powerful Artificial General Intelligence systems? What impact will the advent of such technologies have upon human life? What philosophical, scientific and spiritual ideas should be deployed to explore such questions? How probable are Terminator type outcomes, versus friendlier scenarios where advanced artificial intelligences play a beneficent role to humanity and other sentiences? What should be our top priorities now, looking forward to a radically different AI-centric future? This book gathers together essays that Ben Goertzel wrote during the period 2009-2011, for H+ Magazine and other periodicals, which explore these issues from various directions. Each essay is presented along with a brief personal introduction discussing the context in which the essay was written, and reviewing relevant developments from the period 2012-2014.