Seed AI

Seed AI is a hypothesized type of strong artificial intelligence capable of recursive self-improvement. Having improved itself it would become better at improving itself, potentially leading to an exponential increase in intelligence. No such AI is known to exist, but it remains an active field of research.

Seed AI is a significant part of some theories about the technological singularity: proponents believe that the development of seed AI will rapidly yield ever-smarter intelligence (via bootstrapping) and thus a new era.

Compilers

A limited example is that program language compilers are often used to compile themselves. As compilers become more optimized, they can re-compile themselves and so be faster at compiling.

However, they cannot then produce faster code and so this can only provide a very limited one step self-improvement. Existing optimizers can transform code into a functionally equivalent, more efficient form, but cannot identify the intent of an algorithm and rewrite it for more effective results. The optimized version of a given compiler may compile faster, but it cannot compile better. That is, an optimized version of a compiler will never spot new optimization tricks that earlier versions failed to see or innovate new ways of improving its own program.

Seed AI must be able to understand the purpose behind the various elements of its design, and design entirely new modules that will make it genuinely more intelligent and more effective in fulfilling its purpose.

Organizations

Creating seed AI is the goal of several organizations. The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence is the most prominent of those explicitly working to create seed AI. Others include the Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute, creator of the Novamente AI engine, Adaptive Artificial Intelligence Incorporated, Texai.org, and Consolidated Robotics.

See also

• Evolutionary programming
• Eliezer Yudkowsky — the originator of the Seed AI theory.
• Friendly AI — a theory related to Seed AI.
• General intelligence
• Simulated reality
• Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence — a non-profit foundation promoting the Seed AI and related theories.
• Singularitarianism — a term given to those who promote the Seed AI and related theories.
• Synthetic intelligence
• Technological singularity

External links

• Jürgen Schmidhuber's "Gödel machine" architecture
• Adaptive AI Inc. — A2I2 project website
• The Novamente AI Engine — The project page for AGIRI's planned seed AI
• Levels of Organization in General Intelligence — A formal, academic examination of seed AI design principles
• General Intelligence and Seed AI — An explanation of seed AI from the Singularity Institute