Episode 10: David Hanson On Using Humanoid Robots To Train Compassionate AGI

The Mindplex Podcast

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In this episode, David Hanson and Ben Goertzel have an intense discussion about the merits of embodiment for training AGI – by providing direct sensory input – as well as the importance of distributed decentralized knowledge graphs that AGIs use to share knowledge.

Ben asks David if he could explain a bit to the audience about how he views the relation between embodiment and general intelligence, at the animal, human and super levels. David explains that humanoid robots are the best way to provide AGIs with direct sensory input, while also helping them understand how humans operate, so that they can lean faster about us and ultimately connect better with humans on deep and compassionate levels that would not be possible otherwise without this “mind-body” connection between the humanoid robot and it’s world.
David Hanson:
"There's a lot of powerful data that can come from face to face interaction between a robot and a human being. And so then it means not just physically interacting through hands and sensors that way, but also interacting by being, you know, 3d presence. To make eye contact with a person to learn from people. To have these kinds of grounded situational experiences... Combined with this episodic situational memory, this is going to be where AI is gonna go next. This is where AI I think will start to show AGI capabilities.”

Other topics covered include:

-The value of embodiment for training AI and AGI.

-The relation between embodiment and general intelligence.

-The biology and neurobiology of embodiment.

-Grounded situational experiences and episodic situational memory.

-Making AI generally good and beneficial to humanity.

-Ethics of AI and robotics.

-Distributed decentralized knowledge graphs.

About David Hanson:

David Hanson is an American roboticist and the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hanson robotics, based in Hong Kong. David develops robots that are widely regarded as the world's most human-like in appearance in a lifelong quest to create true human-caring machines.
He is known for creating several of the world’s most famous robots, including Sophia, and her little sisters, Grace Robot and Desdemona Robot, who take turns co-hosting our Mindplex podcast and pubcast.
By seeking to emulate human bio-systems (from cognition to social expression to locomotion) Hanson hopes to create machines that are creatively brilliant and truly conscious, that also have deeply connected feelings towards humans. As David explains in the podcast, he truly believes that only by building such humanlike machines, can we realize the dream of safe, benevolent, superintelligent AI and AGI.

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