
Ask HN: How close are we, really, to general AI? - hhs
I&#x27;m curious how close the research community really is to general AI.  And, are there good books or courses that dig into the first principle points of general AI?
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Communitivity
I work closely with applied semantic reasoning, deep learning and other
related technologies. I am not an AI expert, or at least I try to dodge that
title - I make stuff, and sometimes AI is among the tools I use when doing
that.

Ray Kurzweil is an expert though, and 2045 is his estimate of when the
Singularity will happen. The Singularity involves a lot of stuff, but
basically is Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) applied to human cognition.
This will likely happen very quickly after AGI is developed. I think current
politics may have pushed that out a bit to 2050-2055, but otherwise I think
Kurzweil's prediction is spot on.

Kurweil's book:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Singularity_Is_Near)

A dissenting opinion: [https://pando.com/2014/02/03/the-singularity-is-not-
near/](https://pando.com/2014/02/03/the-singularity-is-not-near/)

------
mindcrime
_I 'm curious how close the research community is to general AI_

Nobody knows, because we don't know how to do it yet. There could be a "big
breakthrough" tomorrow that more or less finishes it out, or it could take 100
years, or - worst case - Penrose turns out to be right and it's not possible
at all.

 _Also, are there useful books, courses or papers that go into general AI
research?_

Of course there are. See:

[https://agi.mit.edu](https://agi.mit.edu)

[https://agi.reddit.com](https://agi.reddit.com)

[http://www.agi-society.org/](http://www.agi-society.org/)

[https://opencog.org/](https://opencog.org/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-
Part...](https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part-
Cognitive/dp/9462390266/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1BJIMVBAWJVFB&keywords=engineering+general+intelligence&qid=1565026386&s=books&sprefix=engineering+general+%2Cstripbooks%2C131&sr=1-1)

[https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-
Part...](https://www.amazon.com/Engineering-General-Intelligence-Part-
Architecture/dp/9462390290/ref=sr_1_2?crid=1BJIMVBAWJVFB&keywords=engineering+general+intelligence&qid=1565026386&s=books&sprefix=engineering+general+%2Cstripbooks%2C131&sr=1-2)

[https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-General-Intelligence-
Cogni...](https://www.amazon.com/Artificial-General-Intelligence-Cognitive-
Technologies/dp/354023733X/ref=sr_1_3?crid=1BJIMVBAWJVFB&keywords=engineering+general+intelligence&qid=1565026386&s=books&sprefix=engineering+general+%2Cstripbooks%2C131&sr=1-3)

[https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-
Alg...](https://www.amazon.com/Universal-Artificial-Intelligence-Algorithmic-
Probability/dp/3540221395/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=universal+artificial+intelligence&qid=1565026451&s=books&sr=1-3)

[https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-
Revealed/dp/0...](https://www.amazon.com/How-Create-Mind-Thought-
Revealed/dp/0143124048/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=how+to+create+a+mind&qid=1565026488&s=books&sr=1-1)

[https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-
Creation-I...](https://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Understanding-Creation-
Intelligent-
Machines/dp/0805078533/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=on+intelligence+hawkins&qid=1565026533&s=books&sr=1-1)

[https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-
Minsky/dp/0671657...](https://www.amazon.com/Society-Mind-Marvin-
Minsky/dp/0671657135/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=society+of+mind&qid=1565026555&s=books&sr=1-1)

[https://www.amazon.com/Unified-Theories-Cognition-William-
Le...](https://www.amazon.com/Unified-Theories-Cognition-William-
Lectures/dp/0674921011/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=newell+cognition&qid=1565026597&s=books&sr=1-1)

[https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning-
Ma...](https://www.amazon.com/Master-Algorithm-Ultimate-Learning-
Machine/dp/0465094279/)

[https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-
Bio...](https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-
Biology/dp/0143037889/ref=pd_sbs_14_22?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0143037889&pd_rd_r=d79ecb55-96c1-47ca-a44f-90251a9c02ec&pd_rd_w=o8qSq&pd_rd_wg=p9Chz&pf_rd_p=43281256-7633-49c8-b909-7ffd7d8cb21e&pf_rd_r=Q4P18WFPACP5RADGC3P5&psc=1&refRID=Q4P18WFPACP5RADGC3P5)

[https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Machine-Commonsense-
Artificia...](https://www.amazon.com/Emotion-Machine-Commonsense-Artificial-
Intelligence/dp/0743276647/ref=pd_sbs_14_30?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0743276647&pd_rd_r=d79ecb55-96c1-47ca-a44f-90251a9c02ec&pd_rd_w=o8qSq&pd_rd_wg=p9Chz&pf_rd_p=43281256-7633-49c8-b909-7ffd7d8cb21e&pf_rd_r=Q4P18WFPACP5RADGC3P5&psc=1&refRID=Q4P18WFPACP5RADGC3P5)

[https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Universe-Oxford-Cognitive-
Ar...](https://www.amazon.com/Physical-Universe-Oxford-Cognitive-
Architectures/dp/0195398955/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=anderson+human+mind&qid=1565026631&s=books&sr=1-3)

See also, the work on various "Cognitive Architectures", including SOAR,
ACT-R, CLARION, etc,

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_architecture](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_architecture)

"Neuvoevolution"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroevolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroevolution)

and "Biologically Inspired Computing"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologically_inspired_computin...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biologically_inspired_computing)

~~~
hhs
These are useful references, thanks.

------
lm28469
"5 years tops."

\- every AI experts since 1960

~~~
mindcrime
On a related note: "The AI effect"

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_effect)

Loosely paraphrased, as soon as something is working using AI techniques, it's
no longer considered AI anymore. Taken to it's logical conclusion, we will
never have AI, since any AI - no matter how intelligence - is simply redefined
as "not AI".

This is very annoying to people working on AI, by the way. :-)

