OpenCog was originally based on the release in 2008 of the source code of the proprietary "Novamente Cognition Engine" (NCE) of Novamente LLC. The original NCE code is discussed in the PLN book (ref below). Ongoing development of OpenCog is supported by Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute (AGIRI), the Google Summer of Code project, Hanson Robotics, SingularityNET and others.
OpenCog consists of:
In 2008, the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), formerly called Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence (SIAI), sponsored several researchers and engineers. Many contributions from the open source community have been made since OpenCog's involvement in the Google Summer of Code in 2008 and 2009. Currently MIRI no longer supports OpenCog.8 OpenCog has received funding and support from several sources, including the Hong Kong government, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation9 and Hanson Robotics. The OpenCog project is currently affiliated with SingularityNET and Hanson Robotics.
Similar to other cognitive architectures, the main purpose is to create virtual humans, which are three dimensional avatar characters. The goal is to mimic behaviors like emotions, gestures and learning. For example, the emotion module in the software was only programmed because humans have emotions. Artificial General Intelligence can be realized if it simulates intelligence of humans.10
The self-description of the OpenCog project provides additional possible applications which are going into the direction of natural language processing and the simulation of a dog.11
"OpenCog: Open-Source Artificial General Intelligence for Virtual Worlds | CyberTech News". 2009-03-06. Archived from the original on 2009-03-06. Retrieved 2016-10-01.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link) https://web.archive.org/web/20090306053354/http://www.cybertechnews.org/?p=915 ↩
Rogers, Stewart (2017-12-07). "SingularityNET talks collaborative AI as its token sale hits 400% oversubscription". venturebeat.com. VentureBeat. Retrieved 2018-03-13. https://venturebeat.com/2017/12/07/singularitynet-talks-collaborative-ai-as-its-token-sale-hits-400-oversubscription/ ↩
"Economic Attention Allocation". https://wiki.opencog.org/w/ECAN ↩
"MOSES". https://wiki.opencog.org/w/MOSES ↩
"Natural Language Generation". https://wiki.opencog.org/w/Natural_language_generation ↩
"OpenPsi". https://wiki.opencog.org/w/OpenPsi ↩
"Emotion modeling - Hanson Robotics Wiki". Archived from the original on 2018-03-19. Retrieved 2015-04-24. https://web.archive.org/web/20180319173932/http://wiki.hansonrobotics.com/w/Emotion_modeling ↩
Ben Goertzel (2010-10-29). "The Singularity Institute's Scary Idea (and Why I Don't Buy It)". The Multiverse According to Ben. Retrieved 2011-06-24. /wiki/Ben_Goertzel ↩
Baram, Marcus (Jul 11, 2019). "Even after his arrest, scientists were more than happy to take money from Jeffrey Epstein". Fast Company. https://www.fastcompany.com/90375335/jeffrey-epsteins-money-was-accepted-by-scientists-even-after-arrest ↩
David Burden; Maggi Savin-Baden (24 January 2019). Virtual Humans: Today and Tomorrow. CRC Press. ISBN 978-1-351-36526-0. Retrieved 25 August 2020. 978-1-351-36526-0 ↩
Ben Goertzel; Cassio Pennachin; Nil Geisweiller (8 July 2014). Engineering General Intelligence, Part 1: A Path to Advanced AGI via Embodied Learning and Cognitive Synergy. Springer. pp. 23–. ISBN 978-94-6239-027-0. 978-94-6239-027-0 ↩