VentureBeat on Novamente and OpenCog
August 5th, 2008Interestingly enough, VentureBeat was inspired by the launch of the OpenCogPrime wikibook to do an article on Novamente and OpenCog generally:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/
I talked to the writer of the article a while, and while he had to keep the article fairly short and to the point, he was actually quite savvy on issues related to Narrow AI versus General AI, the possibility of a technological Singularity, and so forth. Which is great: the more futurist and AGI memes spread through the general techo-savvy population, the easier the job of marketing advanced technologies and products based thereon becomes.
It’s also encouraging that the launch of an open-source project would inspire a VC-focused media outlet to become enthused about a company. I think this is correct, of course — in the current era, the open-source methodology can be a powerful way to move a company ahead, which is one of the reasons Novamente decided to work with SIAI and others to launch the OpenCog project. But not all correct things are embraced by the media and the VC community … I think it’s great that the OSS approach has reached such a level of legitimacy in the business context. (Although, it still must be pursued with subtlety — we have been quite careful about choosing which aspects of our technology to keep proprietary, based on our smart-NPC’s business focus.)
Onward!
Ben