A new direction for Novamente
Hi all,
Welcome to the new Novamente blog!
Although it’s a “corporate blog” the idea is definitely not to have an impersonal corporate communication style — blog entries will be written by particular people within the company presenting their own perspectives on events and ideas of relevance to Novamente LLC. (For example, this entry is written by me, Ben Goertzel, Novamente LLC’s founder, CEO and Chief Scientist.)
Other than announcing this blog, the main purpose of this blog entry is to announce, as the title says, “A new direction for Novamente.”
No, we haven’t given up AGI and decided to reorient ourselves toward making the world’s shiniest paperclips (and, in spite of my daughter’s urging, I haven’t given up AI for bunny breeding either). However, we have made a substantial decision regarding our business direction, one which also has some impact on the technical direction of our AGI R&D.
Since its founding in 2001, Novamente LLC has operated as a combination AI software consulting firm, and AI R&D shop. Our R&D efforts have focused on the creation of the Novamente Cognition Engine AGI system, as well as on the creation of innovative software for natural language processing, data mining and (in collaboration with Biomind LLC) bioinformatics. Our consulting customers have included INSCOM, NIH, Zero Degrees, and other firms in the medical and financial industries. We haven’t grown to a huge size nor have we made a huge amount of profit, but through our consulting work we’ve supported our staff and managed to fund a modest amount of R&D.
But we need to move faster.
Business-wise, we have found that the kind of highly complex AI consulting work we’ve been doing is not a very scalable business model. We have been making a modest profit, but not a huge one.
And in terms of our AGI R&D plan, we have not been progressing toward the completion of the implementation of our Novamente Cognition Engine design, nearly as quickly as we’d like. The current, partial implementation is a good one, and can be used to do some interesting things — but still, it includes only around half of the NCE design. We would like the implementation of the next half to be a LOT faster than the implementation of the last half has been.
Some of our consulting projects have involved some of the Novamente Cognition Engine code, being used in specialized and application-specific ways. So there has been some synergy between the R&D and consulting sides of the company. But this synergy has not worked out as dramatically as was hoped. By and large, we have found, given any specific consulting project there are usually easier ways to meet customer needs on schedule and at low cost, than to use one’s in-development AGI system.
So — to cut finally to the chase — we have decided to re-orient the firm as a software product company, aimed at the Intelligent Virtual Agents space. Some information on our planned product offerings can be found on the Products page on this website:
http://www.novamente.net/product
In short, our intention is to focus our efforts on creating products that utilize the Novamente Cognition Engine to provide intelligent control for virtual agents embodied in simulation worlds, including MMOGs, consumer virtual worlds like Second Life, and training simulations as utilized in government and industry.
We hope to launch our first two products, “Novamente Intelligent Virtual Agents Server” (NIVA) and Novamente Virtual Pet, in 2008. Descriptions of these and other intended product offerings may be found on the Products page mentioned above.
For the time being, we will continue to do AI consulting projects in order to keep revenue coming in. But our goal is, over time, to transform the firm into an intelligent virtual agents software product firm — and to build out our Novamente Cognition Engine AGI design in the context of creating more and more intelligent embodied virtual agents residing in simulation worlds.
Long term, this doesn’t mean we won’t also one day pursue other sorts of opportunities. The ultimate capability of the Novamente Cognition Engine to out-Google Google is never far from my mind (it occurs to me every time I use Google and get frustrated with the whole archaic key word paradigm). I also remain extremely excited about the capability of AGI technology to accelerate progress toward human life extension via intelligent analysis of biological data and text; and our ongoing work in this area is bound to continue, via use of Novamente LLC technology by Biomind LLC staff. Among many other wonderful vistas.
But there’s an old saying, “Your strengths are your weaknesses.” Myself personally as a scientist, and Novamente LLC as a firm, have displayed the strength of diversity and “polymathy” — but this strength has also been a weakness in some contexts, because while there is a depth of understanding that comes from diverse experience, there is also an added efficiency that comes from narrower focus.
I have become convinced that what Novamente LLC needs to do right now is to set aside the protean, omni-potentially useful nature of its technology and concepts , and focus on building products in one particular area — so as to bring in the dramatic profits that will accelerate our progress toward more and more intelligent software (which in turn will bring in more and more profits, etc.).
We have also brought on some excellent advisors to help us with this transition, in the context of forming a formal Strategic Advisory Board for the firm, see
http://www.novamente.net/advisory
The choice of intelligent virtual agents as a focus area was not random, obviously. We went through a few bad choices before this one; and this is the first one that’s being announced publicly, because it’s the first one that really feels “right.”
One of the reasons it feels “right” is that it provides maximum harmony with the R&D goals that have been in the minds of myself and the Novamente LLC founders since the beginning. Controlling intelligent embodied agents in virtual worlds may or may not be the precisely best path to creating powerful AGI, but it’s certainly a reasonable and interesting path in that direction. As we progress down this path, advances in the Novamente Cognition Engine will lead fairly directly to improvements in the products we offer our customers.
Another reason it feels “right” is that it provides a mix of long-term grandiose business possibilities, with short-term concrete market opportunities.
The grandiose part: I do believe that as the Web unfolds over the next 5-10 years, it is going to gradually morph into a sort of “metaverse.” Second Life, World of Warcraft, multiverse.net and all the other virtual worlds coming out lately, are just the beginning. If we can become the dominant provider of intelligent agents for the metaverse as it emerges, that will be a pretty exciting business position.
Ultimately we would like to offer “digital twins” to users of Second Life and other virtual worlds, using Novamente cognition technology to enable your twin to act in your stead in various virtual-world situations. As a starting point, we intend to offer virtual pets for use by virtual world users. (There is a lot of funky learning code already working in the Novamente Cognition Engine, so it won’t be astoundingly hard to, say, make an online Aibo that can out-Aibo Aibo…)
The short-term and concrete part: There is also a healthy market right now in terms of training simulations for use within government and industry. Non-player characters in training sims and “serious games” are just as inflexible and unsatisfying as in entertainment games. Our business model going forward will be based on addressing this market, the MMOG market, and the nascent consumer virtual worlds market, in parallel.
Profit from selling NCE-powered virtual agents will fund R&D on the NCE, allowing us to scale up our R&D side beyond what it is now — and the smarter engines we will build will make our virtual agents yet more powerful and useful.
All in all, this business direction is what John Laird referred to long ago as the “killer app” for AI – a pun on the prevalence of scary murderous AI-controlled monsters in video games. Except, of course, monsters in video games are just a tiny part of it.
Anyway, we will keep you posted via this blog as things develop!
Yours,
Ben Goertzel
CEO and Chief Scientist
Novamente LLC