About Jeffrey Epstein AI

Jeffrey Epstein AI funds an array of innovative projects in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Since its inception as a formal field of study in the 1950’s, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has advanced substantially but has also fragmented into many different areas and goals of research.

As a result, there is much need for consensus building, classification and collaboration in the field of AI. Jeffrey Epstein AI provides valuable funding and support not only in furthering AI research around the world, but also in unifying it, to help scientists collaborate and achieve their vision.

Jeffrey Epstein AI was established by science philanthropist and New York financier, Jeffrey Epstein as a division of the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation. The Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation funds cutting edge science research around the world and established the Program for Evolutionary Dynamics at Harvard University, which studies the evolution of micro-systems with the use of mathematics. The foundation also maintains a keen interest in neuroscience, cognition and the brain.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is any man-made machine that can process information and react to it in some productive way. John McCarthy, the brilliant computer and cognitive scientist, who coined the term in 1955, defined AI as “the science and engineering of making intelligent machines.”

“Although the study of AI dates back to 300 B.C. when binary coding was explored, AI was formerly established as a field of study at a conference at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1956”, Jeffrey Epstein points out. The attendees, including John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon all became AI pioneers in the decades to come. Together with their students, they wrote programs that were astonishing: computers solving word problems in algebra, proving logical theorems and speaking English.By the mid 1960’s, however, computer technology remained hugely expensive and inaccessible and research in the U.S. was limited for the most part to the Department of Defense.

By the 1980’s, AI research was revived by the introduction of home computers, led by IBM and ‘expert systems’, programs that ran on basic linear analysis. And by the 1990’s and early 21st century, AI was increasingly used for commercial purposes, such as data mining, logistics, medical diagnosis and many other areas throughout industry, with Oracle playing a key role alongside IBM.

By the turn of the century, AI was advancing substantially in basic language programming, linear binary coding and robot technology. At the same time, advances in neuroscience and brain diagnostics encouraged numerous academics to have AI emulate human cognition and the brain. The ease of basic programming compared to the gargantuan task of emulating the human mind however, created somewhat of a plateau in AI research because it became quickly clear that basic algorithmic coding would have to morph into something more complex. “AI research, like all science research will advance in spurts,” Jeffrey Epstein commented, whose foundation supports many eminent and Nobel scientists around the world, including Marvin Minsky’s AI Lab at MIT. “Linear coding will exhaust itself, if it hasn’t already. Someone will create an entirely new virtual platform to emulate the mind, and that will launch a new generation of AI discovery.”

Indeed, over the last decade, AI scientists have been pushing the boundaries of linear algorithms, creating virtual software platforms that embody associative, dissociative, memory, basic survival needs and a host of other variables that effect pathway reactions. And while many AI scientists aim to encapsulate the human brain, it’s not the Holy Grail for all AI research. For some, AI research stands as a provocative tool to explore and better understand human cognition. And not just that, but to find and unleash new cognitive capability.

There is of course, an increasingly blurred line between purely mechanical AI, and OI, organic intelligence. On one end of the spectrum, there’s the computer, robot, cell phone and microwave and on the other, the human being, animal, plant or organic cell. But between the two spectrums, there’s a growing fusion: the development of nano-technology and implanted micro-machines for example, alleviating pain, vascular plaque, pacing the heart, regulating brainwaves and targeting cells; or the implementation of modified genes expressing desired traits. But if we’re on track to creating the first generation of borgs, where both intelligences can serve each other, there’s no doubt that it will catapult us towards some kind of cognitive unknown; a cerebral land of Oz.

Today, Jeffrey Epstein AI sponsors many leading scientists at the forefront of AI research, including Marvin Minsky and Seth Lloyd at MIT, Ben Geortzel in Hong Kong, David Hanson of Hanson Robotics in California and Joscha Bach in Berlin. Jeffrey Epstein AI also backs key foundations in Artificial Intelligence, including the OpenCog Foundation and Humanity +