Peter Voss [Part 2]: There is nothing more important and exciting than building AGI

Socrates /

Posted on: May 4, 2014 / Last Modified: May 11, 2022

Peter-VossPeter Voss is an entrepreneur, inventor, engineer, scientist, and AI researcher. He is a rather interesting and unique individual because of his diverse background and impressive accomplishments and his interest in moral philosophy and artificial general intelligence. Given how quickly our first interview went by, I wanted to bring him back and dig a little deeper into some of the issues we touched on the previous time.

During our 53 min conversation with Peter, we cover a variety of topics such as: if and how higher intelligence can make us moral; rational ethics; determinism and the nature of free will, consciousness, and reality; the benefits of philosophizing…

As always you can listen to or download the audio file above or scroll down and watch the video interview in full. To show your support you can write a review on iTunesmake a direct donation, or become a patron on Patreon.

 

Who is Peter Voss?

Peter started his career as an entrepreneur, inventor, engineer, and scientist at age 16. After a few years in electronics engineering, at age 25 he started a company to provide turnkey business solutions based on self-developed software, running on micro-computer networks. Seven years later the company employed several hundred people and was successfully listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange.

After selling his interest in the company in 1993, he worked in a broad range of disciplines — cognitive science, philosophy and theory of knowledge, psychology, intelligence and learning theory, and computer science — which served as the foundation for achieving breakthroughs in artificial general intelligence. In 2001 he started Adaptive AI Inc., with the purpose of developing systems with a high degree of general intelligence and commercializing services based on these inventions. Smart Action Company, which utilizes an AGI engine to power its call automation service, was founded in 2008.

Peter often writes and presents on various philosophical topics including rational ethics, free will, and artificial minds; and is deeply involved with futurism and radical life extension.

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