From: Keith Henson (hkhenson@rogers.com)
Date: Fri Jan 20 2006 - 14:16:07 MST
At 04:36 PM 1/20/2006 +0000, you wrote:
>I have really seen hardly any discussion or exposition directly related to
>the question of AGI investment, from a business standpoint (although I
>think the AGIRI forum is a step in the right direction).
>
>Say today is your lucky day, and you sat down next a millionaire
>businessman on the bus and he asked you "Why should I invest in AGI?".
>
>How would you respond?
"Want to be in on the next Google?
>What makes a good response here? What are some major things you would
>bring up in your answer?
Amara mentioned yesterday
http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=memelist.html?m=4%23594
It's a mock trial where BINA48, an AI computer, is seeking an injunction to
keep itself from being turned off and its parts
arbitrarily rearranged. If you have not read it, you should.
The judge was Joseph P. McMenamin, BINA48's attorney was Martine A.
Rothblatt, and Marc N. Bernstein (EFF) played the attorney for Exabit
Corporation (that had created BINA48). They were all good, good attorneys
are natural actors. Martine had the lead role and did an exceptional
performance defending BINA48.
As Martine points out elsewhere (in the context of space law) when lawyers
start talking about something it is about to happen!
What the computer was doing (for the contrived script) was answering large
numbers of 800 calls (up to 1000?) so well that callers thought they were
talking to humans.
But it's actually a decent basis for a business plan. Replacing 1000 800
number operators would be saving a revenue stream of at least $20,000 an
hour. Times 8760 hours/year, that's $175 million, and probably twice that
unless they were offshore operators. The actual saving would be lower by
what you had to spend on building, hardware, power, technicians and
programmers to keep it in operation, but even $75 million a year cost would
give you a profit stream of $100 million a year. Such a steam would
justify spending perhaps $200 million to get it going (on the assumption
you knew how to do it).
But unless you are talking to a singularity transhumanist businessman, you
should probably cut the story off before BINA48 gets a lawyer. :-)
Keith Henson
PS.
Google returns blank for BINA48 sl4, so I guess this has not been discussed
here before.
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