GoingToMeet

The field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) was initially directly aimed at the construction of “thinking machines” – that is, computer systems with human-like general intelligence. But this task proved very difficult, and so as steps in this direction, AI researchers focused on producing AI systems displaying intelligence regarding specific tasks in relatively narrow domains. In recent years, however, the situation has been changing. More and more researchers have recognized the necessity – and feasibility – of returning to the original goals of the field. Increasingly, there is a call for a transition from the current focus on highly specialized “narrow AI” problem solving systems, back to confronting the more difficult issues of “human level intelligence” and more broadly “artificial general intelligence (AGI).”

Encouraged by the recent success of several smaller-scale AGI-related meetings, we have taken the initiative to facilitate the very first international conference on AGI. The AGI-08 conference will give AGI researchers the opportunity for presenting research results and exchanging ideas on topics of common interest. During the conference, we will also discuss the possibility of creating a new organization to promote and coordinate AGI research.

The conference is explicitly open to all the various techniques used in seeking to realize general intelligence – for instance, symbolic, connectionist, evolutionary, robotic, mathematical, or integrative approaches (... or new approaches that the conference organizers have never heard of!). We are particularly interested in papers describing concrete, reasonably well-fleshed-out AGI projects – meaning, research projects that

* are based on a coherent theory about "intelligence" as a whole
* involve a concrete engineering plan oriented toward implementing the relevant conception of general intelligence in a computer system
* have already produced some concrete results, either practical or theoretical