---
title: Genifer
author: Issa Rice
created: 2018-06-30
date: 2018-06-30
# documentkind:
status: notes
# belief:
---

Some notes on Genifer, which I didn't know about until now.

"Genifer" seems to stand for "general inference". I found out about it from an
[interview with Abram
Demski](https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/kToFGkGj5u5eYLJPF/q-and-a-with-abram-demski-on-risks-from-ai)
which has a quote from cousin\_it/Vladimir Slepnev: "I'm afraid of Abram Demski
who wrote brilliant comments on LW and still got paid to help design a
self-improving AGI (Genifer)."

I don't see Genifer listed in Seth Baum's
[paper](https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3070741) of AGI
projects.

I found this [mailing list posting](https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/comp.ai/k56CgwG86Kk):

> I'm the founder of the AGI (artificial general intelligence) project
> Genifer.  Our aim is to build a thinking machine capable of
> commonsense reasoning, natural language, etc, and even self-
> improvement.
>
> To summarize our project:  Genifer is based on a Bayesian fuzzy-
> probabilistic higher-order logic with logic-based inductive learning.
> Natural language can be translated into our logic akin to combinatory
> categorical grammar.  I've written an online book and plenty of
> introductory slides to explain the theory.
>
> We need more partners.  If you think you're a close fit, or you're
> just interested, please contact me.  Or join the Google group:
> <http://groups.google.com/group/general-intelligence/>

As of today (2018-06-30), the last announcement on the linked mailing list is
from 2015-08-19.

Yan King Yin, the apparent creator of Genifer, has a [GitHub
account](https://github.com/Cybernetic1). There are several Genifer-related
repos.

There used to be a [Google Code project](https://code.google.com/p/genifer/)
but it 404s now.