Agile Life

Last weekend I attended the Artificial General Intelligence Conference 2010 in Lugano, Switzerland.  The train ride from Zurich to Lugano was like something straight out of a fairy tale with tunnels through snow capped mountains, rivers with huge boulders, Swiss chalets, and sunlight sparkling off of snowflakes during sudden snow showers.  That train ride could have been the highlight of the trip, but the conference was as interesting as the countryside is beautiful.

I became interested in AI when I was a computer science student and I ,after getting a glimpse at the conference of what the future may hold,  am now starting to imagine a future where there will be general application of AI. I really like Ben Goertzel’s simple summary of his theory of the mind,  “A mind uses perception and memory to make predictions about which actions will help it achieve its goals.”  Such a mind would be able to autonomously learn novel ways to solve a wide variety of problems. I think there is huge potential for such a mind in the healthcare field.

Today we are witnessing the birth of the health internet where vast stores of health information will be available for an AGI (or AGI+) to solve problems and achieve all sorts of goals for the benefit humans in particular and humanity in general.  There are many perspectives of study in the AGI field  including brain emulation, mathematical modeling using computing theory, and various cognitive architectures that use a variety of disciplines including philosophy, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, computer science, physics, and mathematics.  The AGI conference covered the spectrum, but there is strength in that diversity that is obtained by bringing all of these bright AGI researchers together to share their ideas.  I believe that in my lifetime I will see artificial general intelligence that will help solve all kinds of health problems for humanity by making constructive use of the totality of health information that is being made available through the safe and secure ubiquitous exchange of health information using technology such as the CONNECT solution that my team is building.

Imagine a doctor who could access all recorded health information to develop a diagnosis and who could then develop a treatment plan from total knowledge of every treatment attempted. Imagine a doctor who could develop new innovative theories, diagnoses, and treatments based on all of that information and contribute information back to the knowledge base.  If you can imagine that, then you can imagine a better world. For me that is reason enough to stay tuned in to Artificial General Intelligence.