Machine of Human Dreams
Machine of Human Dreams is a 2016 documentary film written and directed by Roy Cohen. The film focuses on artificial intelligence researcher Dr. Ben Goertzel, known for his work on OpenCog, an open-source artificial general intelligence platform.
The film offers a portrait of Goertzel's decades-long quest to create a thinking machine, and captures his idealism, technological struggles and the human drive fueling scientic ambition.
Summary
With the financial backing of the Hong Kong government, Ben Goertzel believes he finally will realize his lifelong dream of developing human-like artificial intelligence using software that mimics the complex operation of the human mind. Assembling a ragtag team of experts to assist him, the eccentric researcher sets out to create functioning, reasoning humanoid robots. But as pressure mounts to deliver results to his investors, stories about his past enterprises expose the human consequences – and potential limits – of his ambitionsCast
- Ben Goertzel as Self
- Mandeep Bhatia as Self
- Carol Goertzel as Self
- Gwen Aranya Goertzel as Self
- David Hanson as Self
- Aaron D. Nitzkin as Self
- Lisa Pazer as Self
- Ken Silverman as Self
- Mark W. Tilden as Self
- Gino Yu as Self
Production
Director Cohen first met Goertzel at a conference in New York, where he became interested in Goertzel's combination of visionary goals and practical attempts to develop a "thinking machine." The documentary was filmed over several years across multiple international locations, including laboratories at Hong Kong, and research projects in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. It also features Goertzel's collaborations with Hanson Robotics, the company known for developing expressive humanoid robots such as the Einstein prototypes.Cohen documented both the progress and setbacks of Goertzel's work, including instances of malfunctioning prototypes and challenges in securing financial support.