A sign that things are starting to hop in the field of artificial intelligence is how a topic of conversation that would have been considered fanciful – or even insane – some 20 years ago would now be fair game at any Silicon Valley pub or coffee shop. Novamente is a fascinating company doing fascinating development and research guided in part by the idea that the best path to computer general artificial intelligence (that is, intelligence much like we humans have) is through a similar-to-human-intelligence learning path. To this end Novamente is teaching virtual entities to fetch, recognize themselves, and other early stages in human learning. This is taking place in part in the Second Life virtual world.
Sounds crazy? Just a game? I don’t think so. It may be optimistic to think that AI thinking can come about in this way, but it’s sure worth a try.
Joe Duck 