This milestone represents commencement of the research setting the stage for further project work. It will include a research plan and early-stage preliminary findings about potential project directions around hardware approaches and their possible applicability to AGI.

1. Submission of a comprehensive research plan outlining the hardware paradigms and implementations to be explored. 2. Early (preliminary) identification and analyses of several potential hardware approaches—e.g. neuromorphic and distributed systems processors Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) for Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) sparse computing and heterogenous architectures etc.— and suggestions of their possible application areas within AGI systems. 3. Proposal of a detailed project plan including methodologies for evaluating the selected paradigms.

$17,000 USD

A foundation for further project research will have been attained, where the team has gathered a scope of potential hardware approaches as well as possible AGI application areas, subject to refinement in later milestones.

At this stage the research will have amassed adequate mapping of hardware paradigms and their capabilities. This will enable painting a picture of how to pragmatically leverage the hardware options to advance AGI. This stage precedes the identification of more specific use cases.

1. Further fleshing out of the research findings in a text document containing additional information and details on the identified quantum paradigms. 2. Additional theoretical and practical findings on how various hardware could improve AGI system performance integration feasibility scalability and/or energy efficiency. This stage may optionally begin looking at existing quantum hardware e.g. GSI and Tenstorrent APU GPU’s and/or others to note current market products that could be leveraged for AGI systems.

$17,000 USD

Hardware literature review and AGI-relevant analysis have progressed substantially, evidenced by a lengthened research text document (with bibliographic references).

This stage will advance project research to a deeper analysis of AGI-relevant hardware paradigms and their capabilities further identifying opportunities related to performance efficiency scalability reliability and so on. An evaluation of Hyperon technologies will have commenced with regard to how various hardware configurations could improve processing. Relevant hardware will be reviewed in particular products available on the market e.g. e.g. GSI and Tenstorrent APU GPU’s and/or others.

1. Updated documentation reflecting deeper analysis of hardware paradigms AGI-relevant analysis performance and other considerations; and how they may address shortcomings in existing state-of-the-art hardware. 2. Review of hardware products available on the market. 3. Partial identification of potential use cases for hardware paradigms in AGI including Hyperon/OpenCog and its components. 4. An evaluation of how hardware paradigms could improve processing in/of the Hyperon framework.

$17,000 USD

At this stage, the research will have attained greater clarity over the applicability of the hardware paradigms to key AGI tasks, e.g. reasoning, pattern recognition, and resource allocation; and greater clarity over AGI performance; and opportunities for improving Hyperon processing capabilities.

This stage will have completed the scope of the “literature review and AGI-relevance analysis” phase of research setting the larger foundation for next-stage R&D using the insights from this research. This stage will provide clarity regarding opportunities presented by various hardware paradigms for specific AGI functions/tasks. This stage will have identified realistic use cases in AGI including Hyperon/OpenCog. Considerations on rethinking codebases and compilers to take advantage of hardware recommendations will be noted. Enablements from completion of this project for future research could include acquisition of relevant hardware to conduct experiments utilization of hardware paradigms and their functionalities to advance AGI functions/tasks including Hyperon components. If not covered in previous milestones this stage may optionally include analysis of any relevant combinations of examined hardware paradigms and quantum computing (QC) where applicable. This stage may include a high-level overview of possible cognitive enhancements for humans in the era of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) where humans and AGI become more closely coupled.

1. Detailed findings on the hardware paradigms’ and their functionalities’ impact on AGI performance scalability and computational efficiency. 2. Analysis on how particular hardware paradigms meet or may enhance the computational requirements of the various cognitive modules of AGI including Hyperon. 3. Identification of realistic use cases for particular hardware paradigms in advancing cutting-edge AI and AGI efforts including Hyperon/OpenCog. 4. Further analysis of results pointing out possible integrations or further study paths for the selected hardware paradigms and approaches. This may include potential suggestions for acquisition of hardware or cloud computing for experiments. 5. Noted relevant considerations on rethinking codebases and compilers to take advantage of hardware recommendations. 6. Optional: Analysis of any relevant combinations of examined hardware paradigms and quantum computing (QC) where applicable. 7. Optional: If not addressed in the previous milestone this stage would include a high-level explorative overview of how relevant hardware affordances may potentially enhance human (or human-AI–coupled) cognition that may open up in the future due to the ingress of brain-computer interfaces (BCI) and/or other cognitive horizons.

$17,000 USD

This stage will have completed a one-to-one analysis of hardware paradigms and their functionalities matched with the functions/tasks of advanced AI and AGI; elucidated the state of the art of hardware paradigms; how they can optimally enhance AGI and Hyperon functions, tasks, and performance, efficiency, scalability, reliability, etc; offered relevant considerations on rethinking codebases and compilers to take advantage of hardware recommendations; identified realistic use cases for hardware paradigms in AGI, including within the Hyperon/OpenCog framework; (optionally) included an analysis of quantum capabilities that may be relevant to identified hardware paradigms, as applicable; and (optionally) intimated potential ramifications for human-AGI–coupled cognitive enhancements from hardware paradigms, such as neuromorphic computing, in the coming era of BCI.