Summary
Authors: Eric Neuman
Track: Machine Learning
Race cars don't look like cheetahs, so why do attempts at machine sentience try to look like brains? An exploration of the unique challenges and immediate options along one possible path to machine sentience.
The "Do Anything Machine" is the first component in the theoretical Sentience Stack, an open source stack of software that when put together can be configured to learn to be a sentient mind. This approach is inspired by the LAMP stack, the collection of disparate decoupled open-source components (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) that were once commonly used together to make it easy to create websites. LAMP reduced the barriers preventing everyone from building great dynamic websites. It also made it possible for individual components to be swapped out or optimized for a given project allowing the needs of individual projects to push the boundaries as needed. All of these things helped to enable the explosion of growth that created the internet as we know it, and enable it to continue improving.
Although currently in its very earliest stages, the Sentience Stack project will rely heavily on Python's extensive meta-programming capabilities and deep integration into the open source community.