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I've seen plenty of programmers underestimating the problem of AGI as well! ...though for every one that underestimates it, there are plenty that overestimate

I've seen plenty of programmers underestimating the problem of AGI as well! ...though for every one that underestimates it, there are plenty that overestimate it. Solving this problem doesn't necessarily mean that we do anything at all clever; it really may just boil down to having decent brain scanning technology and lightning fast processors to run the simulations. We'll definitely have the computers, in time, so the only question is whether brain scanning improves. If that's what it comes down to, programmers and computer scientists are pretty much irrelevant, and the real heroes will be the guys doing medical tool development. Granted, it would be deeply unsatisfying to "solve" the problem by blindly copying nature. But there's a very real possibility that it's going to turn out to be our first viable solution to the problem, and let's be honest: it's not going to be very difficult to do if the enabling technologies are already in place.

robotrout 17y ago
> deeply unsatisfying to "solve" the problem by blindly copying nature The image that jumped to my mind, was the wing flapping airplane prototypes that, quite literally, never got off the ground, and that we all laugh at today. Perhaps, in the end, our solution won't match natures. That also leads me to another thought, which is the definition of the problem. Going back to the airplane. If the problem had been defined as "to build a machine with birdlike agility and control", than we still wouldn't be there. Instead of patting ourselves on the backs, we would still be miserably failing, over 100 years later. But we didn't really need birdlike agility, we just wanted to fly, which, it turns out, is much easier. The problem statement for a lot of AI research seems similarly ambitious. Do we really want to create some sentient being, trapped in a box? Or is what we're really after, a little more practical and obtainable? I think folks like the military, get this. They have a definite objective that they are trying to accomplish. Autonomous desert navigation, autonomous urban navigation, autonomous enemy identification. These are things you can define, measure, and make progress on.

robotrout 17y ago

> deeply unsatisfying to "solve" the problem by blindly copying nature The image that jumped to my mind, was the wing flapping airplane prototypes that, quite literally, never got off the ground, and that we all laugh at today. Perhaps, in the end, our solution won't match natures. That also leads me to another thought, which is the definition of the problem. Going back to the airplane. If the problem had been defined as "to build a machine with birdlike agility and control", than we still wouldn't be there. Instead of patting ourselves on the backs, we would still be miserably failing, over 100 years later. But we didn't really need birdlike agility, we just wanted to fly, which, it turns out, is much easier. The problem statement for a lot of AI research seems similarly ambitious. Do we really want to create some sentient being, trapped in a box? Or is what we're really after, a little more practical and obtainable? I think folks like the military, get this. They have a definite objective that they are trying to accomplish. Autonomous desert navigation, autonomous urban navigation, autonomous enemy identification. These are things you can define, measure, and make progress on.