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What is the best book/reference to understand why there seems to be general agreement that AGI/"broad" AI will happen? TFA compares the relative likelihood of t

What is the best book/reference to understand why there seems to be general agreement that AGI/"broad" AI will happen? TFA compares the relative likelihood of the various approaches, but says nothing about the absolute likelihood of any of them. Are there signs of AGI we can see today? Is there an argument/data which links the huge improvements we're seeing in narrow AI to the likelihood of AGI?

ktRolster 9y ago
The best argument I've heard is that we can use a computer to model any physical process.....the brain is a physical process, therefore we can use a computer to model the brain. If you think that there is some process in the brain that would be theoretically impossible for computers to model, that would be an interesting topic of discussion.
- chanakya 9y ago
  The brain is a physical entity, yes, so in theory we should be able to model it, assuming we know all the laws it works on with enough precision. This is a big if, but even if that's granted, is there anything which indicates that this is imminent?
  - ktRolster 9y ago
    is there anything which indicates that this is imminent? This article seems to be arguing "no." The biggest thing missing I think is an understanding of how human memory works.
  - red75prime 9y ago
    Market demands. Anyway, given that GI already happened, better question would be "Are there obstacles which could prevent creation of an AGI?". I think the answer is unlikely.
  - fasquoika 9y ago
    I think it depends on how you define "imminent". If we're talking a hundred years, well, a lot can happen in that time. We didn't even have computers a hundred years ago, and now they can do certain things that are considered particularly "human", like have a fairly coherent conversation
    - gradys 9y ago
      I'd be interested to see an example of an AI having a fairly coherent conversation. Most of the impressive seeming examples of this based on response ranking. When a message from a human comes in, the system ranks the responses in its repository of human-written responses to find one that fits. Because the responses are human-written, they can seem locally coherent, but since the model generally isn't tracking any state, the conversation never really goes anywhere. Also, if you try to talk to one of these response rankers about something it doesn't have any canned responses for, obviously it doesn't work. Natural language generation on the other hand, where the model writes each response character-by-character or word-by-word, has the potential to do something much more interesting, but the state of the art there isn't quite at the level of "fairly coherent" AFAIK.
  - adrianN 9y ago
    Unless we come with a way more efficient theory of intelligence than quantum mechanics we won't be able to just simulate a brain for a very long time. Currently we're struggling to simulate systems with a few dozen atoms, so there is no way to scale basic physical simulation up to a whole brain. Hopefully we'll figure out a more useable level of abstraction that still allows for intelligent behavior.
joe_the_user 9y ago
I don't think you could have a specific, strong reference of such sorts. It seems like the argument for AGI appearing reasonably soon isn't ultimately that long. It is just the ingredients seem to be assembling and there's no fundamental limit preventing it. We're getting closer to complexity of a brain, our machines are general purpose, we're getting more of the specific capacities of the brain. How we can get there seems a fundamental unknown but it's hard to see there being a fundamental barrier. The problem is any more detailed argument has to involve one or another prescriptions concerning exactly how to create AGI. And such arguments are going to be much more controversial.
tim333 9y ago
Best is pretty subjective but you might like Wait But Why's thing https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol... We have AI algorithms today like the DeepMind Atari playing stuff that are general and so you could call AGI but that are way below human intelligence. Basically things advance every year in hardware and software and so will probably get there one day.
Houshalter 9y ago
We know intelligence is possible because we exist. The human brain was created by a stupid process of just random mutation and selection. It was designed under ridiculous constraints like very restricted size and power consumption, that we don't have to deal with. And the brain really isn't that great. Signals travel through the brain about a million times slower than electrons through silicon. Neurons are large macroscale structures. Compare to our transistor technology that is approaching the limits of how small you can build things with atoms. These are just the hardware specs, I don't see any reason to believe the software is much better.
- red75prime 9y ago
  > Signals travel through the brain about a million times slower than electrons through silicon. Correction. Electrons' drift velocity in conductors is quite slow and it doesn't affect signal transmission speed.

ktRolster 9y ago

The best argument I've heard is that we can use a computer to model any physical process.....the brain is a physical process, therefore we can use a computer to model the brain. If you think that there is some process in the brain that would be theoretically impossible for computers to model, that would be an interesting topic of discussion.

chanakya 9y ago
The brain is a physical entity, yes, so in theory we should be able to model it, assuming we know all the laws it works on with enough precision. This is a big if, but even if that's granted, is there anything which indicates that this is imminent?
- ktRolster 9y ago
  is there anything which indicates that this is imminent? This article seems to be arguing "no." The biggest thing missing I think is an understanding of how human memory works.
- red75prime 9y ago
  Market demands. Anyway, given that GI already happened, better question would be "Are there obstacles which could prevent creation of an AGI?". I think the answer is unlikely.
- fasquoika 9y ago
  I think it depends on how you define "imminent". If we're talking a hundred years, well, a lot can happen in that time. We didn't even have computers a hundred years ago, and now they can do certain things that are considered particularly "human", like have a fairly coherent conversation
  - gradys 9y ago
    I'd be interested to see an example of an AI having a fairly coherent conversation. Most of the impressive seeming examples of this based on response ranking. When a message from a human comes in, the system ranks the responses in its repository of human-written responses to find one that fits. Because the responses are human-written, they can seem locally coherent, but since the model generally isn't tracking any state, the conversation never really goes anywhere. Also, if you try to talk to one of these response rankers about something it doesn't have any canned responses for, obviously it doesn't work. Natural language generation on the other hand, where the model writes each response character-by-character or word-by-word, has the potential to do something much more interesting, but the state of the art there isn't quite at the level of "fairly coherent" AFAIK.
- adrianN 9y ago
  Unless we come with a way more efficient theory of intelligence than quantum mechanics we won't be able to just simulate a brain for a very long time. Currently we're struggling to simulate systems with a few dozen atoms, so there is no way to scale basic physical simulation up to a whole brain. Hopefully we'll figure out a more useable level of abstraction that still allows for intelligent behavior.

joe_the_user 9y ago

I don't think you could have a specific, strong reference of such sorts. It seems like the argument for AGI appearing reasonably soon isn't ultimately that long. It is just the ingredients seem to be assembling and there's no fundamental limit preventing it. We're getting closer to complexity of a brain, our machines are general purpose, we're getting more of the specific capacities of the brain. How we can get there seems a fundamental unknown but it's hard to see there being a fundamental barrier. The problem is any more detailed argument has to involve one or another prescriptions concerning exactly how to create AGI. And such arguments are going to be much more controversial.

tim333 9y ago

Best is pretty subjective but you might like Wait But Why's thing https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolution-1.html https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revol... We have AI algorithms today like the DeepMind Atari playing stuff that are general and so you could call AGI but that are way below human intelligence. Basically things advance every year in hardware and software and so will probably get there one day.

Houshalter 9y ago

We know intelligence is possible because we exist. The human brain was created by a stupid process of just random mutation and selection. It was designed under ridiculous constraints like very restricted size and power consumption, that we don't have to deal with. And the brain really isn't that great. Signals travel through the brain about a million times slower than electrons through silicon. Neurons are large macroscale structures. Compare to our transistor technology that is approaching the limits of how small you can build things with atoms. These are just the hardware specs, I don't see any reason to believe the software is much better.

red75prime 9y ago
> Signals travel through the brain about a million times slower than electrons through silicon. Correction. Electrons' drift velocity in conductors is quite slow and it doesn't affect signal transmission speed.