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72 out of the 170 survey respondents were attendees of the conferences “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI 12) and “Impacts and Risks of Artificial General I
by panic 11y ago
72 out of the 170 survey respondents were attendees of the conferences “Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI 12) and “Impacts and Risks of Artificial General Intelligence” (AGI Impacts 2012). It's not surprising that AGI researchers believe that AGI will be developed soon.
- Houshalter 11y agoI don't understand why participants of a conference on artificial general intelligence should be excluded from predictions about artificial general intelligence. But whatever, even the "weak AI" researchers had similar opinions: The median predicted date for a 50% probability of AGI was 2050 by the top 100 AI researchers they surveyed. Only 10 years ahead of the more liberal predictions of the AGI group.
- panic 11y agoWell, a survey of AI researchers in the 60's would have said we'd have AGI by now. Surveying researchers in a field is not a reliable method for determining truth.
- mattmanser 11y agoYou should read Nick Bostrom's superintelligence and look into what AI can actually do today. I went from being incredulous like you to apprehensive like Musk/Gates/Hawkings.
- Houshalter 11y agoI'm not certain that's correct, only some people predicted AI within 50 years in the 60's. Presumably modern researchers have a lot more information by now so their predictions are likely to be more accurate. As we get closer in time to it, it will become more predictable and obvious. You can't really have expected people at the time of the very first computers to have predicted the date of AI accurately. Note the prediction has large error bars, with researchers predicting a 90% chance by the end of this century, but "only" a 50% chance within 25 years. Anyway what's the alternative prediction? If you don't take predictions from the experts, who do you ask for predictions? Lay people? Just make stuff up? It's the best we can do.
- panic 11y agoAnyway what's the alternative prediction? If you don't take predictions from the experts, who do you ask for predictions? Lay people? Just make stuff up? It's the best we can do. One way could be to come up with one or more plausible, step-by-step stories for how AGI will be developed, then model how long each step might take to happen. This would open things up to discussion and criticism instead of having to take the word of experts as gospel. It still wouldn't be scientific, but at least it'd be closer.
- Houshalter 11y agoThere are far too many unknowns to even attempt that. No one even agrees what methods will lead to AGI, let alone how long it will take to make the necessary breakthroughs in those fields. This subject is entirely within the realm of opinion. I'm not arguing you should take the predictions as gospel. It's just an interesting and relevant datapoint. Maybe the only objective datapoint we have.
- xixixao 11y agoYou should read the Dartmouth Conference proposal :)
- argonaut 11y agoBecause there is little overlap between AGI researchers and machine learning researchers (or even regular AI researchers, but there's a bit more overlap here). AGI is a mix of philosophy and traditional AI (logic, agents, planning, value functions, etc.). The survey would have much more credibility if it were conducted of researchers at a machine learning conference like NIPS or ICML. Or even a top AI conference like AAAI. Let's just say that we would not be worrying about AGI if it weren't for the advances in machine learning, which has little to do with AGI research.