EFTA00911557.pdf

From: Jeffrey Epstein <jeevacation®gmail.com> To: Ben Goertzel Subject: Re: OpenCog Hong Kong project: next installment of funding needed ;p Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 04:07:06 +0000 number to call?? On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 9:10 PM, Ben Goertzel < > wrote: Hi Jeffrey, The OpenCog Hong Kong project that you funded with $20K last year is progressing well, and is now in need of another $10K of funding to keep it going. (Recall that the Hong Kong government funds 90% of the project, and Novamente LLC's contribution is 10% -- some excellent leverage.) I had originally thought that the next funding for the project would not be needed till August 2011, but it turns out I was misinformed, and it's actually needed by the end of May! So, please read this email & the attached insofar as you have time, and let me know if you're game to donate the additional $10K. If not, I will explore other options (like my personal credit cards, most probably). I really can't afford $10K personally right now, and yet it would be really stupid to let the project die partway through due to lack of $10K, so.... Progress on the project has been great, and Dr. Joel Pitt (a colleague of mine from New Zealand) has relocated to Hong Kong to lead the project. I'm currently earning a living on a consulting contract for a US government agency, which pays me enough to live and requires very little work, enabling me to spend a lot of time collaborating with the Hong Kong guys. I can't move to HK and keep this US gov't contract, but I can visit frequently. I was there for 5 weeks in April/May, and will be there again for all of July. I have attached to this email some information on the project -- An overview and summary document, describing what the project goals are and what we've done so far -- A 2 year roadmap for OpenCog, summarizing what we intend to achieve in the project by the end of 2012 (largely due to the Hong Kong project, but also including some other stuff) -- A long-term roadmap for OpenCog, which is much more speculative but will remind you of my overall thinking on how this near-term work fits into the path toward human-level (and beyond) AGI -- a description of a demo we intend to build over the next few months, as part of the Hong Kong project, to illustrate some of the Al EFTA00911557 functionality achieved If you have any questions about any of this (or anything else related) Pm of course happy to talk, my Google Talk is m Skype is and you know my email In other notes... -- I recently finished a draft of "Building Better Minds" (my 900 page book on how to build AGI) and it's under consideration by World Scientific Press. Cassio (my Brazilian collaborator, whom you met) is currently carefully editing the draft. I suppose it make most sense for you to put in the time to read it after ifs fully edited and ready to be published, but I can send you the current draft if you're interested. The references and figures are still messed up in the current draft, and it needs more editing (which Cassio is doing) but the contents are now fully in place ;-) -- My Hong Kong collaborator Gino Yu and I are planning to put together a proposal for an "AGI Research Center" at his university in Hong Kong, with a cost of perhaps US $3M per year. The goal would be to fund OpenCog and 2 other AGI projects there at a moderate level, initially with a 4 year commitment. If time permits we'll put that proposal together in June, and I can send it your way then if you're curious. -- You may be curious to know that I have a couple students in Xiamen, China working on integrating some of Itamar Arel's DeSTIN computer vision software (remember you met Itamar in Florida, with me and Cassio) with OpenCog. Currently they're porting it to CUDA so it can run on GPU supercomputers, which is needed to make it operate scalably as is needed e.g. for robot vision. I guess that's all for now. If you ever get the urge to discuss AGI in person, let me know and we can get together at your convenience ;) Also, remember the AGI-11 conference is at the start of August on Google's campus in Mountain View, if you feel like spending a couple days hearing weird AGI ideas ;) http://agi-conf.org/2011 Thanks a lot, Ben Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC EFTA00911558  CTO, Genescient Corp Chairman, Humanity+ Adjunct Professor of Cognitive Science, Xiamen University, China Advisor, Singularity University and Singularity Institute "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of Jeffrey Epstein Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. 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