Types of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) Research

Computer scientists and artificial intelligence researchers continue to develop theoretical frameworks and work on the unsolved problem of AGI. Goertzel has defined several high-level approaches that have emerged in the field of AGI research and categorizes them as follows:

Symbolic: A symbolic approach to AGI holds the belief that symbolic thought is “the crux of human general intelligence” and “precisely what lets us generalize most broadly.”

Emergentist: An emergentist approach to AGI focuses on the idea that the human brain is essentially a set of simple elements (neurons) that self-organize complexly in reaction to the experience of the body. In turn, it might follow that a similar type of intelligence might emerge from re-creating a similar structure.

Hybrid: As the name suggests, a hybrid approach to AGI sees the brain as a hybrid system in which many different parts and principles work together to create something in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. By nature, hybrid AGI research varies widely in its approaches.

Universalist: A universalist approach to AGI centers on “the mathematical essence of general intelligence” and the idea that once AGI is solved in the theoretical realm, the principles used to solve it can be scaled down and used to create it in reality.