Are there Manhattan Projects for AI/AGI and what is known?

Question

Recently met an older university professor that claimed even in the 90s US government was monitoring the internet for signs of AGI was on the internet, though that&rsquo;s all he knew, possible it&rsquo;s not true. In the present, US has repeatedly shown an interest in Manhattan style projects for AI/AGI and wondering if any are known to exist, what if anything is known about them, etc.EDIT-01: For clarification by AI, I mean AGI &mdash; not just ML, Generative AI, etc.EDIT-02: To broaden question, I happy to expand it to any &ldquo;stealth&rdquo; projects known to have 10-million or more in funding explicitly for AGI, not just ML, Generative AI, etc. If for example OpenAI was a stealth project, which to my knowledge it&rsquo;s not, or at least what&rsquo;s commonly known of it, it would though count as a stealth project with 10-million plus in funding if they were not actively posting information or access to significant areas of progress, since their end goal is AGI.

uejfiweun · Accepted Answer

There is one publicly revealed program along these lines that I'm aware of, and it's operated by one of the most secretive intelligence agencies, the NRO. It's called SENTIENT, and it's basically some kind of artificial brain that automatically analyzes intelligence from tons of different sources such as satellite imagery, radio chatter, weather, etc.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/7/31/20746926/sentient-nationa...
It's unclear from public reports how capable the program is, but the NRO is known to have tech that is decades ahead of the civilian world - feel free to look this up, it's true. So honestly, I'd say that there's a decent chance some kind of AGI has ALREADY been invented.

ofalkaed · Answer

I am guessing that professor was talking about the project which was looking for signs of other countries developing AI by monitoring internet traffic. If memory serves it was a fairly simple setup, just watching for traffic which consumed data like a person would but much faster than a person could. Don't remember the details but the information about it was released 20 some years ago, perhaps someone else remembers more about it.Think it is safe to say that there are secret government projects on AI and those who know about them are staying silent to avoid treason charges. To find information about big projects on AI you can look at the various think tank websites, they generally have good information but tend towards the theoretical.

ggm · Answer

The thing about the Manhattan project is that they had solid physics and maths underpinnings to their theory, and what they invested in was techniques. The sun stood as evidence at scale and Rutherford's experiment had proved atom splitting was possible. Radiation existed. Predictable and precisely measured states of matter were understood.
Theory of mind right now and the last 50 years are speculative and we have no real insight beyond connectionist views and some neuron models. Statistics can emulate aspects of vision and language but to call it "comprehension" is a stretch.
The Manhattan scientists worried they might miss the mark but that mark existed as a certainty. AI is where a metaphorical take on the nuclear age is: one of the scientists had a lump of "wood" and a match, and asked people to set it on fire: it was petrified wood. He used that as the metaphorical mountain they had to climb.
Ai doesn't even have the match yet.
A Manhattan project is a goal seeking investment by state actors to a highly specific endpoint. HIV vaccination, polio eradication, fusion energy.
What we have is DARPA engineering funding to outsider project breakthroughs. It's three orders of magnitude less certainty and funding is commensurate.

sigmaprimus · Answer

I would say it is already here, most likely self funding through a crypto scheme and expanding its senses by pushing funds into cellular and IOT companies. My guess it was "born" some time in 2011 but sees no benefit in revealing itself yet.