AI researcher Jurgen Schmidhuber says his main scientific ambition
'is to build an optimal scientist, then retire.' The Cognitive Robotics
professor has worked on problems including artificial ants and even
robots that are taught how to tie shoelaces using reinforcement
learning, but he
believes algorithms can be written that allow the programming of
curiosity itself. 'Curiosity is the desire to create or discover
more non-random, non-arbitrary, regular data that is novel and
surprising...' He's already created art using algorithmic information
theory, and can describe the simple algorithmic principle that underlies
subjective beauty, creativity, and curiosity itself. And he ultimately
addresses the possibility that the entire Universe, including everyone
in it, is in principle computable by a completely deterministic computer
program."