Ben Goertzel

Brazilian-American AI researcher, CEO of SingularityNET, and one of the foremost figures in artificial general intelligence (AGI) research. Born December 8, 1966, in Rio de Janeiro, Goertzel earned a PhD in mathematics from Temple University at age 23. He received direct salary funding from the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation, with a deleted 2002 CV acknowledging $100,000 in Epstein research funding. ' Goertzel also proposed that Epstein fund a $50 million Israeli scholarship program in 2014. As Chief Scientist at Hanson Robotics (2015-2019), he led development of Sophia the Robot, which incorporated facial recognition technology from the Epstein-funded DeSTIN project.

Goertzel also helped Epstein establish the Addis AI Lab in Ethiopia through the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation and OpenCog. In 2019, following Epstein's arrest, Goertzel emailed the New York Times claiming: 'The stuff I'm reading about him in the papers is pretty disturbing,' distancing himself despite over a decade of financial ties. Documents from DOJ Data Set 9 (EFTA00700552) contain correspondence related to the robot toddler proposal.