Toward the Starting Line: A Systems Engineering Approach to Strong AI
This is an incremental conceptual contribution aimed at researchers in AGI and systems engineering to advance foundational progress.
The paper tackles the challenge of achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) by proposing a systems engineering approach to bridge the gap from current AI systems, identifying cross-disciplinary opportunities and research directions.
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) or Strong AI aims to create machines with human-like or human-level intelligence, which is still a very ambitious goal when compared to the existing computing and AI systems. After many hype cycles and lessons from AI history, it is clear that a big conceptual leap is needed for crossing the starting line to kick-start mainstream AGI research. This position paper aims to make a small conceptual contribution toward reaching that starting line. After a broad analysis of the AGI problem from different perspectives, a system-theoretic and engineering-based research approach is introduced, which builds upon the existing mainstream AI and systems foundations. Several promising cross-fertilization opportunities between systems disciplines and AI research are identified. Specific potential research directions are discussed.