Machine of Human Dreams

A.I. guru Ben Goertzel grew up in a hippie community in Oregon during the Vietnam War. Inspired by science fiction, he imagined a perfect rational world that would transcend 1970s’ America. Ben has dedicated his life to developing OpenCog, a software that models the human mind. If Ben’s design works, OpenCog will become a human-like general intelligence. But for OpenCog to work, it needs a body. Shot over the course of two years, this film follows Ben’s attempts to create an OpenCog prototype in Hong Kong. But pursuing a dream of this scale is an arduous task. As difficulties pile up, people from Ben’s past cast doubt over his ability to deliver the dream. Can Ben build the first thinking machine? Do you want him to?