University graduate students in computer science, linguistics,
psychology, neuroscience and so on need a suitable topic for
that scholarly contribution known as a Ph.D. dissertation.
The SourceForge
Mind project in artificial intelligence,
on the other hand, needs entree into the academic AI literature.
Why not start your academic career with a blockbuster dissertation?
Think back to Erwin Schrodinger writing his equation in 1926.
He got the idea from a French physicist who had recently defended
his doctoral dissertation. Talk about the impact of a dissertation --
it literally had the bang of an atomic bomb.
Your impact, Dr. Science, could be even greater. Your Ph.D. thesis
could trigger the
doomsday scenario of the
Technological Singularity.
The
Singularity is near, but it hasn't happened yet because you
have not yet submitted your bestseller-book-quality dissertation.
CRITICAL MASS
The AI
Manhattan Project will not get off the ground until we
assemble a scientific infrastructure of experts trained in the
theory and practice of constructing artificially intelligent minds
for robots. A few prototypes such as
http://AIMind-I.com and
http://mind.sourceforge.net/Mind.html are already out there,
but we need a pre-Cambrian explosion of virally proliferating
Mind versions if there is to be a Darwinian eco-system of AI
Minds racing through the Internet and engaging in the mortal
competition ending in the survival of the fittest. Your book
qua Ph.D. dissertation may suceed where AI4U has failed --
as the Gutenberg Bible of the arrival of True AI-Complete.
You may start by simply publishing a few scholarly papers on
open-source artificial intelligence. Magazine and newspaper
articles may flow from you, but the real target is academia.
You are permitted -- and in fact it is your duty -- to take
a critical stance towards the extraordinary scientific claims
made when the Mind project asserts that
AI has been solved,
but you should shy away from embarassing yourself through
woefully ignorant Mentifex-bashing such as happened with the
http://www.advogato.org/article/928.html "Advogato Has Failed"
debacle, where the author could not himself discredit Mentifex
and so he ignorantly cited two attacks on Mentifex that were
actually written by one and the same Internet cyberstalker.
We want here a growing tree of scientific illumination, not
a chain of thoughtless me-too ad-hominem sniper attacks.
Above all avoid the endless, non-productive jawboning about
artificial intelligence such as occurs year in and year out at
http://www.mail-archive.com/agi@v2.listbox.com and other
forums where blowhard discussants quibble about the AI climate
but never write any code that advances the state of the art.
So develop a thesis and run it by your faculty advisor.
Stay aloof from the
Mind project to keep your independence.
When the facts are in and your case is made, publish and
become a Philosophiae Doctor -- a teacher of philosophy.