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Extracted Text (OCR)
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
AGI-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.
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