Chat with Leslie Hawthorn (GSoC administrator)

[Ben Goertzel]

Hi all,

I corresponded a bit with Leslie Hawthorn, the GSoC administrator at Google, and sent her the list of names.   She, Dave Hart and I had a few emails back and forth.

It was a sincere and worthwhile dialogue, and she gave me permission to share a small excerpt of the dialogue with this list, since others are interested... (See the end of this email)

The whole conversation with her contained nothing too revelatory; but I didn't get the impression from the overall dialogue with her that they have "turned against us" in any profound way.  I would imagine that if we make a strong application in 2011, especially based on interesting progress on the project in the interim, then we have a good chance of getting re-accepted next year.

-- Ben

***
...

The simple answer is that there was some debate over OpenCog and at the final cut we decided that we had some better applications. You folks did nothing "wrong" and we were very happy to have you last year.

I realize that it's likely small comfort, but you survived until the last round. Also likely small comfort, but there were several Google open source projects that also didn't make the cut. This was a really tough year selections-wise.

Best,
LH

--

Leslie Hawthorn
Program Manager - Open Source
Google Inc.

****

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 9:18 AM, Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org> wrote:

Ian,

Google supported OpenCog under GSoC for the previous two years and may well do in following years, though they opted to this time.  Their support of OSS projects under GSoC does not imply any deep endorsement of those projects by Google as a corporation....  Their basic goal is to foster OSS generally, and to pull young programmers into OSS ... as I understand it.

-- Ben

On Sat, Mar 20, 2010 at 6:53 AM, Ian Parker <ianpa...@gmail.com> wrote:

OpenCog is indeed an important project. There are however some things I am wondering about. The first of these is. "What is the relationship between OpenCog and theorem provers like Mizar. It seems to me that a COG "atom" is expressible in Mizar as a set theoretic concept.

There is I think one very good reason why Google does not endorse any one program. There are other programs which do similar things. Google should really be going for something like the Matt Mahoney concept. Indeed when I posted on looking things up in a dictionary, you can in fact envisage Google Translate as being one program which can call in other programs such as dictionaries, or even information.

  - Ian Parker

On 20 March 2010 01:05, John G. Rose <john...@polyplexic.com> wrote:

OpenCog, by far, has the most potential of any open source project to date.
Many, or probably most of the GSoC projects are very specific if not even
narrow AI.

Reasons that I can think of why Google didn't choose OpenCog this year is
that they don't realize the importance and/or they may not have enough love
to spread - meaning they want to hit other non-GSoC'ed projects. I know of
one new project... But OpenCog can affect many of the other projects in a
big way. So Google may not realize this and how big of an effect OpenCog can
have. Not sure what their criteria is.

John


> From: Ben Goertzel [mailto:b...@goertzel.org]
>
> Hi all,
>
> The OpenCog project was chosen for Google Summer of Code in 2008 and
> 2009, and it seemed to go well, with a number of highly successful
> projects each year, and very few total failures.
>
> But for some reason, OpenCog was not chosen for GSoC 2010!  We are
> appreciative that they chose us for 2008 and 2009, but we'd like to
> keep going in the program!
>
> We have started a petition aimed at getting OpenCog included in GSoC
> 2010.  I don't know what the odds of success are but I figure it can't
> hurt; and even if it doesn't help for 2010  maybe it will get us back
> in the program for 2011.
>
> If you'd like to be part of the petition leave your name and email here:
>
> http://etherpad.com/ucDI8toKUf
>
> It's an EtherPad which means no login is required to add to the
> document.
>
> Definitely, if you might be a student or mentor for OpenCog GSoC this
> year or in later years, you should sign the petition...
>
> Thanks much
> Ben Goertzel

>



-------------------------------------------
agi
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/

Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&

Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com

agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription

--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Applied Research, Singularity Institute for AI
Chairman, Humanity+
External Research Professor, Xiamen University, China
b...@goertzel.org

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Mignon McLaughlin

--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Applied Research, Singularity Institute for AI
Chairman, Humanity+
External Research Professor, Xiamen University, China
b...@goertzel.org

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Mignon McLaughlin

--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Applied Research, Singularity Institute for AI
Chairman, Humanity+
External Research Professor, Xiamen University, China
b...@goertzel.org

"Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers." -- Mignon McLaughlin