Peter Voss on Artificial General Intelligence, Personalizing Personal Assistants, and Motorcycles

In this episode of Data Driven, Frank and Andy speak with Peter Voss about Artificial General Intelligence, Personalizing Personal Assistants, and MotorcyclesSponsorSponsor: Audible.com - Get a free audio book and support DataDriven - visit thedatadrivenbook.com!Guest BioPeter Voss is the world’s foremost authority in Artificial General Intelligence.His company Aigo (https://www.aigo.ai/) has created the world’s first intelligent cognitive assistant.Aigo was funded with a personal investment of $10 million dollars. They currently manage millions of personalized customer service inquiries for household name-brandsNotable QuotesAigo is Peter's company. BAILeY's Introduction (00:00)The east coast has been blanketed with snow. (01:30)The Expanse books (03:00)Coding for curiosity? - Frank (11:50)"Models don't dynamically learn." - Peter (13:00)Three waves: Logic programming, Deep learning / neural networks, cognitive architecture / intelligence (14:00)Intelligence v. sentience? - Frank (15:50)What about bots being "led astray?" - Andy (18:30)On programming morality... (21:30)AI Safety is a better description - Peter (22:30)Asimov's three laws of robotics - Frank (23:15)On delimmas - Peter (24:15)"Morality should be about human flourishing." - Peter (25:15)Are we using digital means to do something analog? - Andy (27:55)Peter is trained as an electronics engineer. (28:05)"Context is always super-important." - Peter (28:30)"You need a feedback system." - Peter (30:00)AIGO is Peter's company. (31:00)The three meanings of personal. (34:00)"Exo-cortex" (33:50)On context switches (38:30)Did you find AI or did AI find you? (41:00)"I took five years off to study..." - Peter (43:00)What's your favorite part of your current gig? (44:10)When I'm not working, I enjoy ___. (45:00)I think the coolest thing in technology today is ___. (45:30)I look forward to the day when I can use technology to ___. (46:25)Something interesting or different about yourself (47:00)How Not to Die (48:00)Where can people learn more about Peter? (49:00)Book reading / listening recommendations? (49:00)The Mind's I (50:00)Peter's articles on Medium (52:00)Get a free audio book and support DataDriven - visit thedatadrivenbook.com! (00:00)TranscriptThe following transcript is AI generated.00:00:01 BAILeYHello and welcome to data driven.00:00:03 BAILeYThe podcast where we explore the emerging fields of data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.00:00:11 BAILeYIn this episode, Frank and Andy speak with Peter Voss, peterboat.00:00:15 BAILeYPeter Voss is the world's foremost authority, an artificial general intelligence or AGI.00:00:21 BAILeYIn fact, he is the one who coined the term in 2001 and published a book on the topic in 2002.00:00:28 BAILeYHe is a serial.00:00:29 BAILeYAI entrepreneur technology innovator who has for the past 20 years, then dedicated to advancing artificial general intelligence.00:00:38 BAILeYToday he is focused on his company, IGO, which is developing and selling increasingly advanced AGI systems for large enterprise customers.00:00:47 BAILeYPeter also has a keen interest in the interrelationship between philosophy, psychology, ethics, futurism and computer science.00:00:56 BAILeYI think you will find this interview a fascinating look at the future of AI.00:01:01 BAILeYNow on with the show.00:01:05 FrankHello and welcome to data driven, the podcast where we explore the emerging fields of data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence.00:01:13 FrankIf you like to think of data as the new oil, then you can think of us like well.00:01:18 FrankCar Talk because we focus on where the rubber meets the road and with me on this epic virtual road trip down the information highway because we're still locked in quarantine.00:01:29 FrankAs always, Andy Leonard.00:01:30 FrankHow's it going and?00:01:31 AndyGood Frank, how are you?00:01:33 FrankI'm doing well.00:01:34 FrankWe had a bit of snow.00:01:36 FrankWe're recording this on Monday, February 1st and the East Coast has been blanketed in some snow.00:01:37 Peter VossYes.00:01:45 AndyYeah, we got more than we've gotten, probably since 2018 or so. About four inches here in FarmVille and then almost an inch of ice on top of that, which always makes it fun, right?00:01:58 FrankYeah, the ice is worse than the snow on.00:02:00 FrankBasically so I went out, walk the dog today and one of the dogs and it was crunch, crunch, crunch.00:02:06 FrankSo there's a nice layer of ice over everything which is going to make driving later fun, but I do have.00:02:13 FrankI do have the an all wheel drive car which is fantastic.00:02:17 FrankI will never not own one of those again.00:02:19 AndyNice.00:02:21 FrankYeah, you've seen it's the CRV.00:02:23 AndyYes, yeah, it's nice you did well.00:02:26 FrankI dubbed it the Rocinante.00:02:31 AndyIn case our listeners are not familiar with that, with what Frank is referring to, it is not the old novel.00:02:40 AndyFrank is not tilting at windmills instead.00:02:44 AndyAnd if I got that reference wrong, correct me.00:02:46 AndyI'll just edit that out.00:02:47 FrankOh, you are right, it's from this AM Oh my God, I forgot new book on Cody.00:02:48 AndyNot sure.00:02:51 AndyDonkey Quixoti wasn't.00:02:53 FrankYeah yeah Cervantes I was gonna say from Cervantes book and I'm like oh what was the name of that?00:02:53 AndyYeah so.00:02:59 FrankWhich is the opposite of how most people think, but that's what I do.00:02:59 FrankOK, good.00:03:02 AndyThere we go, but it is actually a reference to both the books and a series, The expanse of which Frank and I are great fans, so.00:03:12 FrankAwesome, but you know who's not covered in snow today.00:03:13 AndyI like it.00:03:15 AndyWho is not covered in snow their guest.00:03:16 AndyOur guest.00:03:18 FrankWho lives in?00:03:18 FrankYeah.00:03:20 FrankI'm assuming sunny or Smokey I guess depending on the time of year California Peter Voss Peter welcome to the show.00:03:29 Peter VossThank you, yes, it's we've got snow on the mountains here, but it's very sunny.00:03:36 Peter VossIt's it's nice and we have a lot less smog these days.00:03:41 AndyVery good.00:03:41 FrankNice so you are the.00:03:46 FrankOne of the world's, or if not the world's foremost authority in AGI or artificially artificial general intelligence, and I believe you are the one that coined the term.00:03:58 Peter VossYes, correct and 2001 myself and two other people. We coined the term artificial general intelligence AGI to really distinguish the kind of work we were doing from, you know, specialized narrow AI which is.00:04:18 Peter VossPretty much what everybody else is doing.00:04:20 Peter VossThe original dream of artificial intelligence was of course, to have systems that can think and learn the way humans do, but that turned out to be a lot lot harder than people thought.00:04:31 Peter VossSo over the years, AI really turned into narrow AI using human ingenuity to figure out how to solve one particular problem, like playing chess or.00:04:41 Peter VossContainer optimization or medical diagnosis and then to write a program or to train data to do that to solve that particular problem.00:04:51 Peter VossBut it's really the external intelligence of the program or the data scientists that is then encoded.00:04:58 Peter VossTo solve that problem, whereas we wanted to get back to the original dream of having a thinking machine that it can figure out how to do these things and and learn more humans do so.00:05:09 Peter VossThat's why we felt we had to.00:05:12 Peter VossYou know, coin a separate term to distinguish it from narrow AI.00:05:16 FrankInteresting.00:05:18 FrankSo for years, AGI has been.00:05:21 FrankKind of thought the stuff of science fiction.00:05:24 FrankI think there was a lot of optimistic people like you said that thought we would have it by...