The topic of this book - the creation of software programs displaying broad, deep, human-style general intelligence - is a grand and ambitious one. And yet it is far from a frivolous one: what the papers in this publication illustrate is that it is a fit and proper subject for serious science and engineering exploration. No one has yet created a software program with human-style or (even roughly) human-level general intelligence - but we now have a sufficiently rich intellectual toolkit that it is possible to think about such a possibility in detail, and make serious attempts at design, analysis and engineering. possibility in detail, and make serious attempts at design, analysis and engineering. This is the situation that led to the organization of the 2006 AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute) workshop; and to the decision to publish a book from contributions by the speakers at the conference. The material presented here only scratches the surface of the AGI-related R&D work that is occurring around the world at this moment. But the editors are pleased to have had the chance to be involved in organizing and presenting at least a small percentage of the contemporary progress.

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