Gigaom AI Minute – November 6

Transcript

When it comes to building an artificial general intelligence there are three mental hurdles we have to grapple with. They are the mind, and the brain, and consciousness. On the previous episode, I talked about the brain. Now I'd like to talk about the mind.

The mind is a concept we all employ. “Are you out of your mind?” “I am of two minds about this,” and so forth. None of these phrases would sound quite the same if you use the word “brain” instead of “mind.” "Are you out of your brain?”

What is the mind? The mind is the idea that there are certain things that the brain is seemingly able to do that you wouldn't expect an organ to necessarily be able to do. You wouldn't necessarily expect an organ to be creative or have a sense of humor. And yet somehow we have a sense of humor and we are creative. That's our mind.

To build an artificial general intelligence however you have to grapple with the idea of mind because an AI by definition would be creative. And so not only do we not understand the brain, we don’t understand the mind either and that is a big component of building an artificial general intelligence.