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Are humans considered AGI? Reading https://intelligence.org/2013/08/11/what-is-agi/ https://intelligence.org/2013/08/11/what-is-agi/ I'd say yes. Then why doesn

Are humans considered AGI? Reading https://intelligence.org/2013/08/11/what-is-agi/ https://intelligence.org/2013/08/11/what-is-agi/ I'd say yes. Then why doesn't all this scary stuff like godlike status and instant recursive self-improvement happen to us? Personally, I think that AGI smarter (maybe much smarter) than humans is possible and even probable, but assuming that it will reach physical limits of intelligence and will do it quickly seems to require a leap of faith.

JoshTriplett 10y ago
We're not artificial, but we're general intelligence. However, we don't have the ability to rapidly improve ourselves in exponential ways, or to debug and self-improve our thought processes in fundamental ways, or even to multiplicatively improve ourselves by running on faster hardware. We can't perfectly and instantaneously transfer knowledge between people, and we lose large quantities of knowledge and experience by the hundred-fifty-thousand per day. An AGI doesn't have to reach physical limits of intelligence (if there are any) to rapidly become far more intelligent than humans.
idlewords 10y ago
There are a lot of leaps of faith baked into these scenarios. It appeals to fundamentally religious instincts. Notice that people start with a seemingly sensible set of propositions, and what falls out is the Apocalypse, immortality, heaven (or AI hell) and a sense of urgency, up to and including passing the collection plate. Since you asked about the argument for recursive self-improvement goes like this. Say Alice is a human engineer, who designs an AI (Bob) who is her intellectual equal. Then she can run Bob on faster hardware, and the now-smarter-than-her Bob can repeat the trick to design Clara, and so on. It's AIs all the way up. If you're a certain kind of beardo, you imagine this process could be compressed into a few hours.

JoshTriplett 10y ago

We're not artificial, but we're general intelligence. However, we don't have the ability to rapidly improve ourselves in exponential ways, or to debug and self-improve our thought processes in fundamental ways, or even to multiplicatively improve ourselves by running on faster hardware. We can't perfectly and instantaneously transfer knowledge between people, and we lose large quantities of knowledge and experience by the hundred-fifty-thousand per day. An AGI doesn't have to reach physical limits of intelligence (if there are any) to rapidly become far more intelligent than humans.

idlewords 10y ago

There are a lot of leaps of faith baked into these scenarios. It appeals to fundamentally religious instincts. Notice that people start with a seemingly sensible set of propositions, and what falls out is the Apocalypse, immortality, heaven (or AI hell) and a sense of urgency, up to and including passing the collection plate. Since you asked about the argument for recursive self-improvement goes like this. Say Alice is a human engineer, who designs an AI (Bob) who is her intellectual equal. Then she can run Bob on faster hardware, and the now-smarter-than-her Bob can repeat the trick to design Clara, and so on. It's AIs all the way up. If you're a certain kind of beardo, you imagine this process could be compressed into a few hours.