After a bit of searching, I found more info about Verses AI and their new chief scientist. I like the approach they're taking: putting more emphasis on natural thinking process in neuroscience. And their new chief scientist has publications that would lead them in that direction. The ideas look good, and I would recommend them. But I don't know how far he and his colleagues have gone in implementing them, or how long it will take for anything along those lines to be running in a practical system.

However, it's unlikely that any company would hire somebody as chief scientist without a considerable amount of prior work. And I doubt that any company would make an announcement in a full-page ad in the New York Times unless they already had some kind of prototype.

Following is a list of theoretical publications by Karl Friston: https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/#_Computational_neuroscience

None of them describe an implementation. But it's possible that he and his colleagues (and/or graduate students) have implemented something that Verses AI wanted.

And by the way, one reason why I like this approach is that it's related to methods that Peirce was suggesting. He is famous for his innovations in logic, but he also had many ideas about biosemiotics and reasoning methods in living things down to the level of insects and plants. He even mentioned possible aliens in outer space as agents that might continue research if humans didn't survive.

Although I don't know whether Verses AI will succeed with their plans, I believe that the direction they're taking is more promising than anything OpenAI or Google is doing. I believe that any design that ignores neuroscience is a dead end for AGI.

John

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An excerpt from https://www.verses.ai/press-2/vers-karl-friston

“It is with great enthusiasm and excitement that we welcome Karl Friston to VERSES as our Chief Scientist,” said Gabriel René, Founder, and CEO of VERSES. “Dr. Friston’s breakthrough work in neuroscience and biologically-inspired AI, known as Active Inference, aligns beautifully with our vision and mission to enable a “smarter world” where AI powers the applications of the 21st century. As the originator of this principle, it is only fitting that Karl has a significant role in VERSES AI research and development all the way through their applied uses in product commercialization.”

Friston who was ranked #1 most influential neuroscientist in the world by Semantic Scholar in 2016 has had an illustrious and decorated scientific career. He became a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2006 and The Royal Society of Biology in 2012, received the Weldon Memorial Prize and Medal in 2013 for his remarkable contributions to mathematical biology and was elected as a member of EMBO in 2014 and the Academia Europaea in 2015. He was the 2016 recipient of the Charles Branch Award for unparalleled breakthroughs in Brain Research and the Glass Brain Award from the Organization for Human Brain Mapping. He holds Honorary doctorates from the universities of York, Zurich, Liège, and Radboud University.

“I am delighted and honored to join VERSES. I have seldom met such a friendly, focused, committed, and right-minded group of colleagues. On a personal note, my appointment as Chief Scientist is exactly the kind of dénouement of my academic career I had hoped for – a dénouement that marks the beginning of a new and exciting journey of discovery and enabling.” said Karl Friston.