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What seems more likely at this point is that: machine translation will get so good that it will be better at translating between languages than any human can; i

What seems more likely at this point is that: machine translation will get so good that it will be better at translating between languages than any human can; image classifiers will become so good that they will be better at classifying images than any human can; self-driving cars will become so good that they will be better at driving than any human can; etc. etc. I think the mismatch comes when people looking from the outside who have no real understanding of how the internals work see this progress in a very narrow domain and extrapolate that idea into thinking that something more general is happening. When you understand the trick, it stops being magic.

klipt 8y ago
If a machine can drive a car, how much harder is it to drive a tank? If a machine can generate strategies to win simulated wars, how much harder is it to generate strategies to win real wars? If machines can out compete people on 50% of jobs, how much harder is it to out compete people on 100% of jobs?
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
  Well, even for humans driving a car doesn't mean you can drive a tank; being good at Rome: Total War or Starcraft doesn't mean you can win a real war; and we're a long way away from "machines" being able to outcompete 50% of humans at their jobs.
red75prime 8y ago
Some day we will understand how we do our tricks though.
- garmaine 8y ago
  Or alternatively, how to accomplish the same thing in an easier way -- we don't fly in commercial aircraft by flapping feathered wings, after all. And then magic will be dissolved and we might find that general AI isn't really all that much harder than narrow AI.
EliasY 8y ago
Adding to the fact that thousands of tricks are involved in the resourcefulness of the human brain and that each trick has multiple ways to interact with other tricks or modify itself . Duplicating this feat into machines isn't a simple matter. AGI isn't going to be some miracle of ML or any one technique. It requires simulating several different self selective learning models and their managers including a way to learn and debug better ways of learning, combining at least 10 different realms of knowledge and process representation including language abstractions, several tools for selecting which method for learning/remembering/acting is appropriate, several strategies for goal creation, selection, planning, execution and evaluation, a robust and scalable memory architecture, a dependable way to interact with the environment, programs for self evaluation and debugging.... the list goes on..... Bottom line is that nobody can get all this functionality from a few optimization algorithms...
- citrablue 8y ago
  Didn't we already get all this functionality from one optimization algorithm, namely, biological evolution?
  - EliasY 8y ago
    Yes. But I don't think we've millions of years to make that happen nor do we have the capabilities or the knowledge to create the environmental situations that could potentially reinforce these mutations.
    - citrablue 8y ago
      The timeline only matters if the generational period is the same. For the rest, I agree that we don't currently. But things change.
garmaine 8y ago
So we're in agreement, right? > When you understand the trick, it stops being magic. The only argument I've seen about the difficulty of general AI is that we don't presently know how to do it. But it only seems difficult (like magic) because of our lack of comprehension. Maybe it actually is, but the good odds are that like everything else it's just one or a couple of tricks, and once we put the pieces together we'll be moving just as fast.

klipt 8y ago

If a machine can drive a car, how much harder is it to drive a tank? If a machine can generate strategies to win simulated wars, how much harder is it to generate strategies to win real wars? If machines can out compete people on 50% of jobs, how much harder is it to out compete people on 100% of jobs?

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
Well, even for humans driving a car doesn't mean you can drive a tank; being good at Rome: Total War or Starcraft doesn't mean you can win a real war; and we're a long way away from "machines" being able to outcompete 50% of humans at their jobs.

red75prime 8y ago

Some day we will understand how we do our tricks though.

garmaine 8y ago
Or alternatively, how to accomplish the same thing in an easier way -- we don't fly in commercial aircraft by flapping feathered wings, after all. And then magic will be dissolved and we might find that general AI isn't really all that much harder than narrow AI.

EliasY 8y ago

Adding to the fact that thousands of tricks are involved in the resourcefulness of the human brain and that each trick has multiple ways to interact with other tricks or modify itself . Duplicating this feat into machines isn't a simple matter. AGI isn't going to be some miracle of ML or any one technique. It requires simulating several different self selective learning models and their managers including a way to learn and debug better ways of learning, combining at least 10 different realms of knowledge and process representation including language abstractions, several tools for selecting which method for learning/remembering/acting is appropriate, several strategies for goal creation, selection, planning, execution and evaluation, a robust and scalable memory architecture, a dependable way to interact with the environment, programs for self evaluation and debugging.... the list goes on..... Bottom line is that nobody can get all this functionality from a few optimization algorithms...

citrablue 8y ago
Didn't we already get all this functionality from one optimization algorithm, namely, biological evolution?
- EliasY 8y ago
  Yes. But I don't think we've millions of years to make that happen nor do we have the capabilities or the knowledge to create the environmental situations that could potentially reinforce these mutations.
  - citrablue 8y ago
    The timeline only matters if the generational period is the same. For the rest, I agree that we don't currently. But things change.

garmaine 8y ago

So we're in agreement, right? > When you understand the trick, it stops being magic. The only argument I've seen about the difficulty of general AI is that we don't presently know how to do it. But it only seems difficult (like magic) because of our lack of comprehension. Maybe it actually is, but the good odds are that like everything else it's just one or a couple of tricks, and once we put the pieces together we'll be moving just as fast.