AI

We recently introduced the open-source Primal Layers AI framework, which is inspired by the evolutionary architecture of the human brain. When we began developing this framework, it quickly became clear that it made little sense without a body. Whether this is a profound insight about consciousness or merely a reminder that nature never produced a species of disembodied brains, we can’t say for certain. Either way, our intelligence model needs a physical form — a robot we’re calling PrimalBot.

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The inspiration for this article is Mike the Headless Chicken. The story of Mike is one of the more bizarre episodes in history, an accident that became a rural American legend. In 1945, a farmer in Fruita, Colorado, attempted to butcher a chicken for dinner but missed the jugular vein and left part of the brain stem intact. Amazingly, the bird survived and continued to walk, perch, and even attempt to peck for over 18 months.

The pursuit of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has ignited a geopolitical competition of historic proportions. This is a massive technological arms race, with leaders like Vladimir Putin saying whoever achieves AGI first will “rule the world”. There are parallels with the nuclear arms race, which tends to get peoples attention, but is this comparison accurate? And what does it all mean for a country like Australia, a tech savvy, middle power, caught in the middle of this tussle?

For the purposes of this article, we will define AGI as at or above human level intelligence, and acknowledge that this vague description doesn’t capture the wider issues, about what intelligence is and how we measure it.