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Top people including DeepMind's CEO Demis Hassabis and Prof Stuart Russell, a AAAI and AAAS fellow who is a co-author of the AI textbook used at most of top uni

Top people including DeepMind's CEO Demis Hassabis and Prof Stuart Russell, a AAAI and AAAS fellow who is a co-author of the AI textbook used at most of top universities, agree that AGI is definitely possible and going to happen. [1] Hassabis also stated in another session that there are probably at least half a dozen mountains to climb before reaching AGI and he would be surprised if it takes more than 20. He also said that it has been easier to develop major advances than he thought. [2] Considering that there has been about one major leap per year in neural networks architecture and systems for the past 3-4 years, and this includes training neural networks to do one-shot learning for physical robot control after practicing in a simulator, should we really be that complacent? Even if the advances slow down to one per 2 years and it takes 12 of them to get to AGI, that's only 24 years. If the rate continues to be one per year, that's only 12 years. [1] From the start of https://youtu.be/h0962biiZa4 https://youtu.be/h0962biiZa4 [2] https://youtu.be/V0aXMTpZTfc https://youtu.be/V0aXMTpZTfc Note: Reinforcement Learning is far from the only component being researched at major labs, including DeepMind and OpenAI.

tanilama 9y ago
> Top people including DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Prof Stuart Russell, a AAAI and AAAS fellow who is a co-author of the AI textbook most used at top universities, agree that AGI is definitely possible and going to happen. Even though they are high-profile people, in DL, since people still don't know a lot about it, their confidence means nothing. When I was in college, my professors/textbook alike, claimed that in order to conquer Go, we probably needs quantum computer or something really sci-fi, maybe in 50 years, even 100 years. Guess what, no one, not even the most optimistic person, would predict it will beat the best human player in 10 years. So, yeah, AGI might happen, maybe in 10 years, maybe in 100 years, but until it happens, no one really knows when is that moment exactly.
- nopinsight 9y ago
  The point is whether we should be complacent and dismiss concerns just because we don't know when it will happen. Once someone builds it, stopping it might be very difficult. Here's why: https://youtu.be/4l7Is6vOAOA https://youtu.be/4l7Is6vOAOA (less than 9 minutes and very clearly explained). Dismissing even a 10% chance of possible catastrophic risks is not what we practice in any other domains. Would you dismiss a concern over airplanes that have a 10% or even just a 1% chance of crashing?
  - eastWestMath 9y ago
    I guess, as a theoretical computer scientist myself, my first reaction is to roll my eyes. I get that these guys are trying to drum up interest with investors/funding agencies, but "My greatest fear is that my research is too successful" is still pretty grandiose. It sounds like those physicists who thought they had figured everything out in the '30s (or AI researchers before the last winter). I think it's pretty telling that Zuckerberg isn't worried despite having an empire built on AI - he's not asking anyone for money.
    - pixl97 9y ago
      Zuckerberg just wants to use ANI to better push ads at you. Any fear of AI will make it harder for him to do just that. This is all about mone and earning more of it.
      - studentrob 9y ago
        I agree that Elon and Mark are likely to say things that they think will win them support. I think the best way to understand AI tech is to try it out yourself. The closer you are to understanding its internals, the more informed you'll be. Fundamentally, it's currently all statistics. It's up to you, then, to decide whether humans are just statistical machines, or if we have something more that may not be understood by science yet, such as free will.
    - seagreen 9y ago
      > physicists who thought they had figured everything out in the '30s Certain 30s physicists were making "My greatest fear is that my research is too successful" warnings that turned out to be pretty on-point.
  - tanilama 9y ago
    Point is, nobody knows whether AGI really exists or not, based on our current approach. As I have answered in another comment section, natural language understanding haven't been cracked, at all. I mean at all. So the reality is, it is like ancient human knows birds can fly with wings, but people can only fly in their dreams. Now, we know people can think intelligently with their brain, but no one knows how to make computer works the same. It is far too early to talk about the risk, until we have the Wright brothers of AI to enlighten us on such possibility.
- throwaway47861 9y ago
  >Guess what, no one, not even the most optimistic person, would predict it will beat the best human player in 10 years. This is what I call living in a bubble, dear sir/madam. I grew in a small town in Eastern Europe (~100k population) and me plus the local 50 or so programmers (using Apple II and 8086-based computers), in 1996, while we were in our teenage years, were painfully aware that games like chess and Go are brute-force-able with some elements of recognizing and memorizing viable strategies (and throwing out the unviable ones early on). And that was what, 15-19 year old late teenagers, and we knew it. So be sure that many people knew it -- they just never chose that area of expertise specifically. This also says a lot about the quality of the average professors and textbooks, but let's not go off-topic, plus it's a huge discussion area.
unityByFreedom 9y ago
Stuart Russel doesn't put a specific date on the arrival of AGI. That puts him at odds with Musk, who predicts 2030-2040. It's also at odds with the study that has the very biased question asking experts "when do you think AGI will arrive?". Many chose not to answer the question, and thus their answers can't be averaged in. Many of the AGI safety conscious crowd skip over the question of whether we will be able to create AGI and just assume we will. There's no precedent for this kind of discovery. Fire, the lightbulb, and nuclear weapons all pale in comparison.
- nopinsight 9y ago
  We also don't know how long it will take to solve Provably Safe AI problem. Wouldn't it be wiser to start preparing now? Nuclear weapons were deemed impossible by some experts at the time. Throughout history, whenever there are a number of experts who believe something to be impossible and a substantial number who believe it to be possible, the latter are almost always right. See also my other answer that begins with "Unlike airplanes, ..."
  - unityByFreedom 9y ago
    > We also don't know how long it will take to solve Provably Safe AI problem. Wouldn't it be wiser to start preparing now? Sure, go for it. I think this has been in the news a lot recently because Musk told government leaders to expect AGI as early as 2030-2040. It's a bit of a ridiculous claim. One of the biggest AI competitions, ImageNet, expects to run for the next 12 years, and that's just for making sense of images. Perhaps it'll be done in less than 12, however, the predictions of the ML community and Musk do not line up. > Nuclear weapons were deemed impossible by some experts at the time. I suppose time will tell with regards to AGI then. I suspect we'll have another economic dip before 2030, and all this hype will die down before then. And, we'll remember this time as any other in the past when we predicted flying cars by the year 2000
    - nopinsight 9y ago
      It was announced this year's ImageNet competition would be the last. Any change to this? http://image-net.org/challenges/beyond_ilsvrc http://image-net.org/challenges/beyond_ilsvrc Edit: I think the announcement above is about object recognition on still images, which is largely solved. The "new ImageNet" one on Kaggle in the reply below is for videos.

tanilama 9y ago

> Top people including DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis and Prof Stuart Russell, a AAAI and AAAS fellow who is a co-author of the AI textbook most used at top universities, agree that AGI is definitely possible and going to happen. Even though they are high-profile people, in DL, since people still don't know a lot about it, their confidence means nothing. When I was in college, my professors/textbook alike, claimed that in order to conquer Go, we probably needs quantum computer or something really sci-fi, maybe in 50 years, even 100 years. Guess what, no one, not even the most optimistic person, would predict it will beat the best human player in 10 years. So, yeah, AGI might happen, maybe in 10 years, maybe in 100 years, but until it happens, no one really knows when is that moment exactly.

nopinsight 9y ago
The point is whether we should be complacent and dismiss concerns just because we don't know when it will happen. Once someone builds it, stopping it might be very difficult. Here's why: https://youtu.be/4l7Is6vOAOA https://youtu.be/4l7Is6vOAOA (less than 9 minutes and very clearly explained). Dismissing even a 10% chance of possible catastrophic risks is not what we practice in any other domains. Would you dismiss a concern over airplanes that have a 10% or even just a 1% chance of crashing?
- eastWestMath 9y ago
  I guess, as a theoretical computer scientist myself, my first reaction is to roll my eyes. I get that these guys are trying to drum up interest with investors/funding agencies, but "My greatest fear is that my research is too successful" is still pretty grandiose. It sounds like those physicists who thought they had figured everything out in the '30s (or AI researchers before the last winter). I think it's pretty telling that Zuckerberg isn't worried despite having an empire built on AI - he's not asking anyone for money.
  - pixl97 9y ago
    Zuckerberg just wants to use ANI to better push ads at you. Any fear of AI will make it harder for him to do just that. This is all about mone and earning more of it.
    - studentrob 9y ago
      I agree that Elon and Mark are likely to say things that they think will win them support. I think the best way to understand AI tech is to try it out yourself. The closer you are to understanding its internals, the more informed you'll be. Fundamentally, it's currently all statistics. It's up to you, then, to decide whether humans are just statistical machines, or if we have something more that may not be understood by science yet, such as free will.
  - seagreen 9y ago
    > physicists who thought they had figured everything out in the '30s Certain 30s physicists were making "My greatest fear is that my research is too successful" warnings that turned out to be pretty on-point.
- tanilama 9y ago
  Point is, nobody knows whether AGI really exists or not, based on our current approach. As I have answered in another comment section, natural language understanding haven't been cracked, at all. I mean at all. So the reality is, it is like ancient human knows birds can fly with wings, but people can only fly in their dreams. Now, we know people can think intelligently with their brain, but no one knows how to make computer works the same. It is far too early to talk about the risk, until we have the Wright brothers of AI to enlighten us on such possibility.
throwaway47861 9y ago
>Guess what, no one, not even the most optimistic person, would predict it will beat the best human player in 10 years. This is what I call living in a bubble, dear sir/madam. I grew in a small town in Eastern Europe (~100k population) and me plus the local 50 or so programmers (using Apple II and 8086-based computers), in 1996, while we were in our teenage years, were painfully aware that games like chess and Go are brute-force-able with some elements of recognizing and memorizing viable strategies (and throwing out the unviable ones early on). And that was what, 15-19 year old late teenagers, and we knew it. So be sure that many people knew it -- they just never chose that area of expertise specifically. This also says a lot about the quality of the average professors and textbooks, but let's not go off-topic, plus it's a huge discussion area.

unityByFreedom 9y ago

Stuart Russel doesn't put a specific date on the arrival of AGI. That puts him at odds with Musk, who predicts 2030-2040. It's also at odds with the study that has the very biased question asking experts "when do you think AGI will arrive?". Many chose not to answer the question, and thus their answers can't be averaged in. Many of the AGI safety conscious crowd skip over the question of whether we will be able to create AGI and just assume we will. There's no precedent for this kind of discovery. Fire, the lightbulb, and nuclear weapons all pale in comparison.

nopinsight 9y ago
We also don't know how long it will take to solve Provably Safe AI problem. Wouldn't it be wiser to start preparing now? Nuclear weapons were deemed impossible by some experts at the time. Throughout history, whenever there are a number of experts who believe something to be impossible and a substantial number who believe it to be possible, the latter are almost always right. See also my other answer that begins with "Unlike airplanes, ..."
- unityByFreedom 9y ago
  > We also don't know how long it will take to solve Provably Safe AI problem. Wouldn't it be wiser to start preparing now? Sure, go for it. I think this has been in the news a lot recently because Musk told government leaders to expect AGI as early as 2030-2040. It's a bit of a ridiculous claim. One of the biggest AI competitions, ImageNet, expects to run for the next 12 years, and that's just for making sense of images. Perhaps it'll be done in less than 12, however, the predictions of the ML community and Musk do not line up. > Nuclear weapons were deemed impossible by some experts at the time. I suppose time will tell with regards to AGI then. I suspect we'll have another economic dip before 2030, and all this hype will die down before then. And, we'll remember this time as any other in the past when we predicted flying cars by the year 2000
  - nopinsight 9y ago
    It was announced this year's ImageNet competition would be the last. Any change to this? http://image-net.org/challenges/beyond_ilsvrc http://image-net.org/challenges/beyond_ilsvrc Edit: I think the announcement above is about object recognition on still images, which is largely solved. The "new ImageNet" one on Kaggle in the reply below is for videos.