Machine Of Human Dreams explores how artificial intelligence could one day overtake mankind

Roy Cohen’s startling new film looks into research done by Ben Goertzel

According to the A.I. maverick and “transhumanist” Ben Goertzel, humans are “the minimal general intelligence system on this planet at this time…humans are not the end of the line any more than amoebas are the end of the line.”

Goertzel is the subject of Roy Cohen’s startling new film, Machine Of Human Dreams, premiering at the Sheffield Doc Fest this weekend. The documentary profiles Goertzel while telling the story of his ongoing attempts to refine “OpenCog,” his Artificial General Intelligence software that models the mind - and that he hopes will be used by robots that are as “smart, creative and kind” as any human.

The way that Goertzel explains it in Cohen’s documentary, creating “walking, talking, smiling, gesturing, humanoid robots” is straightforward enough. All you need to do is hook up them with OpenCog software and let them interact with the world.

The human brain builds itself from “its vast amount of life experience.” It is a “constantly evolving hypograph of nodes and links.” The robot brain will develop in the same way. One idea is to use toy robots.

Ben Goertzel

“If you have a million people playing with robots that connect with OpenCog’s mind in the “mind cloud,” then you have a million people who are teaching your AGI (robot) by interacting with it,” he suggests.

There have been plenty of recent sci-fi movies that have dealt with A.I., everything from Ex-Machina to Her, from Robot & Frank to Interstellar. We’ve all seen movies in which robots act as butlers or lovers or warriors or surrogate kids. Subject matter which used to be for the geeks is now resolutely mainstream. Google has invested heavily in A.I. buying British company DeepMind, Facebook has an A.I. department and Baidu is also spending heavily on A.I research.

Director Cohen studied neuroscience at Harvard University and then spent time as a research assistant at MIT. During his studies, he encountered for the first time “people who were interested in questions of artificial intelligence not merely as science fiction but as their vocation.” Goertzel, whom he met at a conference in New York, was intriguing: someone who didn’t just spend his time in blue sky research but has been striving very hard to build the first “thinking machine.”

Cohen talks how Goertzel’s capacity to “think and do and communicate at the same time.”

Ben Goertzel demonstrating his work got the Government

One very dowbeat phrase, though, is repeated several times in Machine Of Human Dreams that you don’t hear in the sci-fi movies. Goertzel talks constantly about “resource restriction.” That’s another way of saying that he is in a continual battle for funding. Cohen’s film stands both as a celebration of its subject’s utopian vision - and as a cautionary tale about how difficult that vision is to realise.

In the film, Goertzel emerges as part visionary, part mountebank. He can always attract partners and excite investors but he struggles to hit deadlines. A company he set up in New York “pissed away” $20 million (as his former business partner puts it.) There is an excruciating scene in the documentary in which he and his colleagues demonstrate their A.I. “child” robots to their Chinese investors in Hong Kong. The robots let them down. Little bits of their bodywork fall off. They give answers that have nothing to do with the questions they’re being asked.

The set backs don’t shake Goertzel’s confidence in his vision. Nor do his partners lose faith in him. Robotics physicist and former NASA engineer Mark Tilden speaks of him with unreserved enthusiasm. “Ben has one of the best models of mind that I’ve ever met.”

Goertzel has now seen Machine Of Human Dreams. His initial reaction wasn’t enthusiastic. “He was pretty…furious,” Cohen acknowledges. “Ben would have liked a film that was more technology focused.”

Einstein robot

After reflecting further, Goertzel revised his view. He accepted that Cohen had needed to “condense” his story and that the filmmaker had been fair given the “plethora of perspectives” that the documentary includes.

“I definitely recommend you to watch the film,” Goertzel wrote on a recent blog post. “I particularly like the parts of the movie covering my team's recent work in Hong Kong and Addis (Ababa) – I think these are excitingly shot and directed, and they show aspects of our recent robotics tinkering that there's no other way to get a visual look at.”

What the film doesn’t reveal is just when Goertzel’s thinking machine will finally become a reality - or whether he will get there first. Goertzel is currently working for his former partner David Hanson as chief scientist at Hanson Robotics, the company which created the first expressive biped robot. Hanson is renowned for his marketing flair and business skills. He also patented “Frubber,” the spongy flesh rubber which can make robots look like Alicia Vikander in Ex-Machina.

“I think that combination, David Hanson’s flair for what works and what sells and Ben’s truly brilliant mind, that may be the combination that makes the breakthrough,” Cohen states.

When (and if) the breakthrough finally happens, one prediction can safely be made - the fast blurring lines between robots in sci-fi and those in real life will disappear altogether.

(Machine Of Human Dreams premieres at Sheffield Doc Fest this week, UK premiere Saturday, June 11th @14:45 and will be released in UK cinemas later in the year.)