Jeffrey Epstein’s Funding of AGI Research and OpenCog Projects

The Webmind Diehards, who helped begin the Novamente project that succeeded Webmind beginning in 2001: Cassio Pennachin, Stephan Vladimir Bugaj, Takuo Henmi, Matthew Ikle’, Thiago Maia, Andre Senna, Guilherme Lamacie and Saulo Pinto Those who helped get the Novamente project off the ground and keep it progressing over the years, including some of the Webmind Diehards and also Moshe Looks, Bruce Klein, Izabela Lyon Freire, Chris Poulin, Murilo Queiroz, Predrag Janicic, David Hart, Ari Heljakka, Hugo Pinto, Deborah Duong, Paul Prueitt, Glenn Tarbox, Nil Geisweiller and Cassio Pennachin (the co-authors of this book), Sibley Verbeck, Jeff Reed, Pejman Makhfi, Welter Silva, Lukasz Kaiser and more All those who have helped with the OpenCog system, including Linas Vepstas, Joel Pitt, Jared Wigmore / Jade O'Neill, Zhenhua Cai, Deheng Huang, Shujing Ke, Lake Watkins, Alex van der Peet, Samir Araujo, Fabricio Silva, Yang Ye, Shuo Chen, Michel Drenthe, Ted Sanders, Gustavo Gama and of course Nil and Cassio again. Tyler Emerson and Eliezer Yudkowsky, for choosing to have the Singularity Institute for AI (now MIRI) provide seed funding for OpenCog. The numerous members of the AGI community who have tossed around AGI ideas with me since the first AGI conference in 2006, including but definitely not limited to: Stan Franklin, Juergen Schmidhuber, Marcus Hutter, Kai-Uwe Kuehnberger, Stephen Reed, Blerim Enruli, Kristinn Thorisson, Joscha Bach, Abram Demski, Itamar Arel, Mark Waser, Randal Koene, Paul Rosenbloom, Zhongzhi Shi, Steve Omohundro, Bill Hibbard, Eray Ozkural, Brandon Rohrer, Ben Johnston, John Laird, Shane Legg, Selmer Bringsjord, Anders Sandberg, Alexei Samsonovich, Wlodek Duch, and more The inimitable "Artilect Warrior" Hugo de Garis, who (when he was working at Xiamen University) got me started working on AGI in the Orient (and introduced me to my wife Ruiting in the process). And Changle Zhou, who brought Hugo to Xiamen and generously shared his brilliant research students with Hugo and me. And Min Jiang, collaborator of Hugo and Changle, a deep AGI thinker who is helping with OpenCog theory and practice at time of writing. Gino Yu, who got me started working on AGI here in Hong Kong, where I am living at time of writing. As of 2013 the bulk of OpenCog work is occurring in Hong Kong via a research grant that Gino and I obtained together e Dan Stoicescu, whose funding helped Novamente through some tough times. e Jeffrey Epstein, whose visionary funding of my AGI research has helped me through a number of tight spots over the years. At time of writing, Jeffrey is helping support the OpenCog Hong Kong project. Zeger Karssen, founder of Atlantis Press, who conceived the Thinking Machines book series in which this book appears, and who has been a strong supporter of the AGI conference series from the beginning My wonderful wife Ruiting Lian, a source of fantastic amounts of positive energy for me since we became involved four years ago. Ruiting has listened to me discuss the ideas contained here time and time again, often with judicious and insightful feedback (as she is an excellent AI researcher in her own right); and has been wonderfully tolerant of me diverting numerous evenings and weekends to getting this book finished (as well as to other AGl-related pursuits). And my parents Ted and Carol and kids Zar, Zeb and Zade, who have also indulged me in discussions on many of the themes discussed here on countless occasions! And my dear, departed grandfather Leo Zwell, for getting me started in science. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_012906