Today I am excited about the possibility of a scientists’ open letter on Artificial General Intelligence and the Singularity, proposed by Bruce Klein of the Immortality Institute. The idea is based on the success of open letters on cryonics and anti-aging which were written last year. An open letter on AGI would be a significant improvement on, for example, my page titled “Who Cares About the Singularity?” It would need to be liberally dashed with Ph.Ds and other well-established persons. See the discussion thread over at ImmInst. My position is that any open letter on AGI should include at least the following points to be effective:

1. Artificial General Intelligence is a legitimate field that seeks to build software systems with general intelligence, that is, AI that can independently find problem-solving strategies and solutions for problems in biology, physics, engineering, architecture, nanotechnology, cognitive science, and programming, with quality equalling or surpassing the brightest human minds.

2. Artificial General Intelligence is a subfield of Artificial Intelligence with the greatest long-term consequences. Most of Artificial Intelligence is focused on building software systems for narrow tasks, rather than flexible general intelligence.

3. Artificial Intelligence as a field is not frozen or stagnant, and many important advances have been made in recent years.

4. Artificial General Intelligence, if built, would be intelligent enough to improve on its own programming and robotics without human assistance. Construction of the first true AI could have consequences far beyond the original programmers’ intentions. Because of its superior cognitive hardware, AGI could self-improve very rapidly by human standards. This represents significant risk but also significant promise. Rogue AI is a legitimate, near-term threat to the human species, on par or exceeding the risk of nuclear war, bio-terror, or asteroid impact.

5. The problem of how to ensure that AI remains friendly to humanity as it gains the ability to reprogram itself is unsolved. Before we build human-equivalent Artificial General Intelligence, there should be extensive theoretical and experimental (on infra-human AIs) studies to ensure that future AGIs are good global citizens, even given the ability to reprogram themselves, adhering to the “spirit” and not just the “letter” of their goal programming.

6. Ultimately, human-equivalent AI cannot be avoided. So AGI researchers should do their best to ensure that AGIs benefit humanity rather than hinder it. Because the benefits of successful AGI would be so large, arguing about the specifics of the distribution of benefits is not as important as ensuring that everyone receives them.

7. We must not anthropomorphize AI, and assume that AGIs will be motivated by the same things that motivate us, find challenging the same obstacles that challenge us, arrange themselves in social configurations the same way that we do, etc.

8. A number of potential paths to AGI exist, including symbolic AI, genetic algorithms, universal inference and decision theory, and whole brain emulation.

And because today is Sunday, I’m providing links to a couple fun games for your amusement. First, there is a 3D Logic, a brain-teasing microgame where the player must find paths between colored nodes on three faces of a 3D cube. Then, there is Katamari Damacy II, an interactive flash based on the ever-popular PS2 game. It only takes a few minutes to beat.

Last but not least, has Digg finally beat Slashdot. For those of you who are not familiar, Digg is a site that generates news headlines based on user votes. Slashdot is a centralized news site (historically the most popular) with articles written by a few authors.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend!