Some fascinating reading this week!

First, the New York Times asking “Why are the corporations hoarding trillions?” where they claim Apple, Google and other giants don’t spend or convert their cash, as if expecting something just beyond the horizon. Something that would need an insane amount of money.

Second, Ben Goertzel with “Superintellingence: fears, promises and potentians”, a through and in-depth review and criticism of current literature by Bostrom, Yudkowsky and others.

This struck me as amusing:

As Peter Norvig of Google has noted (personal communication), quite suddenly we’ve gone from outrage at the perceived failure of AI research, to outrage at the perceived possible success of AGI (Artificial General Intelligence) research!

For the last decade, AI research and theory is booming, and it’s very hard to ignore the fact that every other app or service now has some form of machine learning or AI-like capabilities, the most common example being Siri on iOS. There are many more examples, like Google Now or various personal assistants like AlfaSense, X.ai or even something as simple as a blog layout system.

Very excited to see the progress.