Dr Ben Goertzel is an artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur, best known as the founder and CEO of SingularityNET, a decentralised AI network. He is widely credited with popularising the term artificial general intelligence (AGI), and he led the software team behind Hanson Robotics’ Sophia robot.
Brian Rose has interviewed Goertzel eight times on London Real between 2019 and 2023. The first conversation, in 2019, asked whether AI will kill us. The other seven were recorded in 2023, the year ChatGPT went mainstream, and cover AI risk, the race between Google and OpenAI, machine ethics, SingularityNET’s Zarqa project and the turmoil at OpenAI over Sam Altman.
His recurring argument is that the danger lies less in AI itself than in who builds it and for what purpose, which is why he wants AGI developed in open, decentralised networks. Every interview is listed below in order, with a short summary.
Artificial Intelligence & The Singularity: Will A.I. Destroy Life As We Know It? (January 2023). Recorded just after ChatGPT launched, it is the fullest statement of his view on AI risk and why AGI should be decentralised. For the earlier picture, watch Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Us? (2019).
Short clip: Success Secrets (from Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Us?, 2019).
Speaking in 2019, Goertzel said a superintelligence is unpredictable by nature, so the real question is the transition. If the first powerful AIs are built mainly for selling, spying, killing and gambling, he argues, those values are likely to shape what follows.
He does not rule out AGI turning on humanity, but in 2023 he argued that AI is far less likely to wipe out humanity than humans are. The more immediate risks, in his view, are job losses, widening global inequality and AGI built to serve a small group.
Goertzel founded SingularityNET in 2017 as an open, blockchain-based network of AI services. He argues that a beneficial AGI cannot be owned by a single corporation, military or country, and should be developed openly and raised with positive values.
In June 2023 he described tests showing that large language models can predict what people consider right almost as well as a person can. He said the problem is not knowing ethics but having a goal system that puts the good of all sentient beings first.
Goertzel argues that systems like GPT-4 hallucinate and only imitate invention. Speaking at Consensus 2023, he said the next step is neural-symbolic AI, combining transformer models with logical reasoning and evolutionary learning, which is the idea behind SingularityNET’s Zarqa project.
Dr Ben Goertzel is an artificial intelligence researcher and entrepreneur, born in 1966, who founded and runs SingularityNET. He is credited with popularising the term artificial general intelligence and led the software team behind the Sophia robot at Hanson Robotics.
Across eight interviews with Brian Rose from 2019 to 2023, Goertzel talked about whether AI will destroy humanity, the race between Google and OpenAI, why language models lack morals, the departure of Geoffrey Hinton from Google, the crisis at OpenAI over Sam Altman and his own decentralised approach to AGI.
Start with Artificial Intelligence and The Singularity from January 2023, recorded just after ChatGPT launched. For his earlier thinking, watch Will Artificial Intelligence Kill Us? from 2019.
Eight times between 2019 and 2023: once in 2019 and seven times in 2023. A short Success Secrets clip is taken from the 2019 interview.
SingularityNET is a decentralised network of AI services built on a blockchain, which Goertzel founded in 2017. Its stated aim is an AGI that is not controlled by any single company or country and is open to anyone.
He says it cannot be ruled out, but he considers it much less likely than humans harming each other with AI. Speaking in 2023, he described AI as possibly the greatest hope for saving humanity from itself, provided it is developed openly and with good values.
He is widely credited with popularising the term artificial general intelligence, meaning AI that can learn and reason across any domain rather than a single task. He also leads the AGI Society, which runs an annual AGI research conference.
Official site: goertzel.org
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