The field of AI began with dreams of creating machines with human-level and even superhuman intelligence. But over the years it has drifted into a focus on "narrow AI" -- software programs that deal exclusively with specific areas like chess, medical diagnosis, mathematics, vision or robot arm control. These programs are very good at what they do, but they lack the ability to generalize their knowledge across different domains, as well the ability to reflect on themselves or create fundamental innovations and insights. Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has been pushed into the margins of the AI discipline.

AGIRI -- the Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute -- is a small team of individuals committed to bucking the trend toward AI conservatism, and explicitly working toward the grand goal of true artificial general intelligence.

We realize that AGI is a huge and speculative quest, in which success is far from guaranteed. But, in the words of Sir Edmund Hilary (the first to ascend Everest), "Never venture, never win."

The potential payoff is, after all, spectacular. As many futurist thinkers have observed, true AI may be the last big innovation humans ever make. Because if one can create a software program with a roughly human level of general intelligence, this program will most likely be able to learn to program and do AI theory -- and thus to improve its own intelligence. The creation of a real AGI thus has the potential to lead to a process of exponentially increasing computational intelligence, resulting in software whose intelligence and general capability vastly exceeds that of human beings. The existence of such software could lead to radical transformation of the human race itself, and to further developments we humans (with our small brains) literally can't even dream of.

Of course, this kind of AI-based futurist vision is not new. Damien Broderick pursued similar themes in his 1998 book "The Spike". Ray Kurzweil takes them up in his forthcoming book "The Singularity is Near". Sci-fi writer Vernor Vinge coined the term "Singularity" and discussed these issues way back in the 1980's. Futurists Eliezer Yudkowsky, John Smart and Nick Bostrom have also published interesting thoughts on the topic.

What differentiates us from many other techno-visionaries, however, is that we have a concrete plan for moving toward these goals. Although our work is guided by ambitious long-term visions, our strategy for realizing these visions is practical and down-to-earth.

We are committed to spreading the word about AGI to the general public, and increasing the visibility of AGI research in the academic and commercial worlds. But the center of our AGI work is the Novamente AI Engine, an in-development software system that we believe has the potential to lead to the creation of a powerful AGI system.

The Novamente engine embodies a unique, complex-systems based approach to AI, integrating aspects of many prior AI projects and paradigms. We are seeking to use Novamente to create a "baby AI mind" which can be taught through intensive interaction. The ideas underlying the Novamente system and the "Novababy" project are based on years of prior research by Dr. Ben Goertzel, Dr. Pei Wang and others.

The Novamente AI Engine codebase also has shorter-term applications in several practical domains, including bioinformatics, data mining and information retrieval. The pursuit of these practical applications is the concern of AGIRI's commercial affiliate, Novamente LLC. Novamente LLC has licensed Novamente technology to the startup firm Biomind LLC for use in genetics and proteomics applications. Additional applications in other domains are anticipated.

The founding members of the AGIRI team have been working together for about 4 years -- first (1998-2001) on the Webmind AI system, and then on Novamente.

Physically, we are a distributed organization. Some of us are based in the US, and some are based in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, working for AGIRI via the software consulting firm Vettatech. Others are located in Poland, Britain, Rio de Janeiro and other locales.

AGIRI is a registered Delaware nonprofit corporation.

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