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What is Good.ai?

October 21, 2018 Ian LeViness Business Comments Off

Leading the Way to the Age of Artificial General Intelligence

“Our mission is to develop artificial general intelligence, as fast as possible, to help humanity and understand the universe.”

That is the first thing that you encounter upon visiting the website of Good.ai, which is an AI research firm, based in the Czech Republic. The primary reason that we are mentioning them here is that all of their efforts appear to involve working towards the ultimate goal of leading the way to artificial general intelligence.

Through their example, it could be easier to comprehend the work that is currently being done in this area and as a result, what might be necessary to change to truly reach AGI one day.

In a letter to anyone reading their website, Good.ai’s founder Marek Rosa attempts to make what drives his company explicitly clear. In a general sense, one conclusion that can be drawn from this is that Good.ai is reasonably, but not overly ambitious.

They are not exactly planning to usher in the age of AGI alone, but rather become a major contributor toward bringing it about in their own way. Specifically, this seems to center around a software program that has the ability to efficiently automate what Good.ai calls “cognitive processes” for just about any sort of business.

What might not be clear at first is precisely what “cognitive processes,” are, beyond their basic definition. In truth, Good.ai actually explains this quite well in the next few sentences of the letter. Ultimately, they envision a software program that can handle certain tasks that current AI systems cannot handle, simply because now, AIs do not think and feel on the same level that humans do.

With this in mind, it would be logical for you to question my statement above that Good.ai is only reasonably ambitious.

In this case, you would be right on point with your argument. Upon further review of Good.ai’s offering, it actually becomes clear that the opposite could be true. They do plan to be the first mover in terms of ushering in the age of Artificial General Intelligence and they pull no punches on their chances of doing so in a sort of all-encompassing way. To truly understand the magnitude of such a goal, it’s important to be explicitly clear on what the coming of the age of Artificial General Intelligence means.

In an overarching sense, there is really only one reasonable way that this can be conceptualized. Reaching AGI means reaching a time when AI systems can clearly think and feel in a fashion that is at least almost the same as what humans do. Related to this, one of the downsides of Good.ai is that judging by their current partnerships, it seems as if they have not moved beyond the borders of the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Therefore, if they truly hope to usher in the age of AGI, they should continue their efforts by going as global as they possibly can within reason, which includes spreading their work to as many different business sectors as possible. Even though this research is in its early stages, without the right partnerships, it might never get the backing that it seems to deserve. In future pieces, expect us to examine the viability of achieving AGI given the tech we have now, through the cases of even more companies like this one.