Ben Goertzel with Cassio Pennachin & Nil Geisweiller & the OpenCog Team Engineering General Intelligence, Part 1: A Path to Advanced AGI via Embodied Learning and Cognitive Synergy September 19, 2013 This book is dedicated by Ben Goertzel to his beloved, departed grandfather, Leo Zwell – an amazingly warm-hearted, giving human being who was also a deep thinker and excellent scientist, who got Ben started on the path of science. As a careful experimentalist, Leo would have been properly skeptical of the big hypotheses made here – but he would have been eager to see them put to the test! Preface This is a large, two-part book with an even larger goal: To outline a practical approach to engineering software systems with general intelligence at the human level and ultimately beyond. Machines with flexible problem-solving ability, open-ended learning capability, creativity and eventually, their own kind of genius. Part 1, this volume, reviews various critical conceptual issues related to the nature of intelligence and mind. It then sketches the broad outlines of a novel, integrative architecture for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) called CogPrime ... and describes an approach for giving a young AGI system (CogPrime or otherwise) appropriate experience, so that it can develop its own smarts, creativity and wisdom through its own experience. Along the way a formal theory of general intelligence is sketched, and a broad roadmap leading from here to human-level artificial intelligence. Hints are also given regarding how to eventually, potentially create machines advancing beyond human level – including some frankly futuristic speculations about strongly self-modifying AGI architectures with flexibility far exceeding that of the human brain. Part 2 then digs far deeper into the details of CogPrime’s multiple structures, processes and functions, culminating in a general argument as to why we believe CogPrime will be able to achieve general intelligence at the level of