The Quest for AGI: Timelines and Engagement

David Ferrucci led the team that built Watson, the IBM question-answering system that beat the top humans in the world at the game of Jeopardy. He is also the Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist of Elemental Cognition, a company working engineer AI systems that understand the world the way people do. This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on iTunes or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline with timestamps for this episode (on some players you can click on the timestamp to jump to that point in the episode):

00:00 – Introduction
01:06 – Biological vs computer systems
08:03 – What is intelligence?
31:49 – Knowledge frameworks
52:02 – IBM Watson winning Jeopardy
1:24:21 – Watson vs human difference in approach
1:27:52 – Q&A vs dialogue
1:35:22 – Humor
1:41:33 – Good test of intelligence
1:46:36 – AlphaZero, AlphaStar accomplishments
1:51:29 – Explainability, induction, deduction in medical diagnosis
1:59:34 – Grand challenges
2:04:03 – Consciousness
2:08:26 – Timeline for AGI
2:13:55 – Embodied AI
2:17:07 – Love and companionship
2:18:06 – Concerns about AI
2:21:56 – Discussion with AGI