The Odyssey of Mind: the Natural Foundation of Artificial Intelligence
A conversation with award-winning computer scientist Dr. Eray Özkural about the future of artificial general intelligence and its natural roots

Colorhythm, a digital imaging services and software company, is renting our meeting room and has cordially invited Mechanics' Institute members to attend their presentation.

Explore the naturalistic foundations of artificial intelligence (AI) in a live conversation with Dr. Eray Özkural, AI theorist and inventor who is working on the path to develop and verify human-level general purpose AI by the year 2018.

Eray is joined by Colorhythm CEO Jeff Nova in a live dialogue about the nature of reality, how we know what is true, and the nature of consciousness, followed by a deep dive into Dr. Özkural's theoretical work in information theory and artificial intelligence. We end the evening with predictions on the future and the possibilities Eray would like to see emerge.

Dr. Özkural visits us from Istanbul, Turkey. He completed his PhD in Computer Science at Bilkent University in Ankara, with a dissertation on parallel data mining. His theoretical paper entitled "Ultimate Intelligence Part I: Physical Completeness and Objectivity of Induction" earned him the Kurzweil Prize for Best AGI Idea at the 8th Conference on Artificial General Intelligence in Berlin, Germany.

Dr. Eray Özkural is a computer scientist with a deep interest in artificial intelligence. His research interests include artificial intelligence, artificial general intelligence, machine learning, data mining, cognitive architectures, theoretical neuroscience, parallel computing, compiler design, computer architecture, computer graphics, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, philosophy of language, and digital physics.

Dr. Özkural is the inventor of the Heuristic Algorithmic Memory concept, which is a long-term memory system for Artificial General Intelligence. He invented an FPGA virtualization scheme for Global Supercomputing, Inc., which was internationally patented.

Jeff Nova's father, Bill Harmon, was an executive at Nikon, and Jeff grew up with hundreds of photography books all around him that he pored through with fascination. His father had the honor of working with astronauts on three Apollo missions, training them for photography on the Moon. His insatiable love for the science of image making still lives on in his son, years later, as CEO of Colorhythm, a retouching and digital asset management software company in San Francisco.

Jeff earned a BA and MA in Psychology from Wesleyan University, focusing on cultural psychology and hermeneutical approaches to gender, race and class identity politics. His graduate thesis focused on identity hierarchies and narratives among humans and how they relate to human/non-human animal distinctions. He also earned another Master's degree in Women's Studies from SUNY, University at Albany, writing his thesis on the neurophilosophy of free will under the mentorship of philosopher of science and molecular biologist, Dr. Bonnie Spanier.

Jeff's passions include philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, neuroscience, drumming, evolutionary biology, and cultural psychology.