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Simpler neural networks clearly have limitations that we might be reaching. Recent papers from DeepMind and OpenAI, among others, show that one can develop more

Simpler neural networks clearly have limitations that we might be reaching. Recent papers from DeepMind and OpenAI, among others, show that one can develop more sophisticated architectures that can solve some complex real-world problems much better than vanilla networks, however. Granted we are still far from AGI even with these new advances, but given the progress of the field in the last few years as resources pour in, we cannot say for certain that AGI won’t be reached in our lifetime. One watershed moment I would look out for is when an AI wins a Starcraft tournament. Winning Starcraft requires many of the ‘general intelligences’ humans excel at (relative to current machines). In my estimation, it is much harder than Go (continuous state space, multi-agent interactions, etc.). DeepMind has announced they are working on it but I’d guess we are at least 2, likely 5 or more, years away from achieving the milestone.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago
>> Granted we are still far from AGI even with these new advances, but given the progress of the field in the last few years as resources pour in, we cannot say for certain that AGI won’t be reached in our lifetime. The progress of the field in the last few years is limited to improvements in performance on specific benchmarks all of which pertain to classification specifically and only in a few domains- speech recognition, image recognition and lately game-playing (the function of the deep nets in the AlphaGo family is still essentially discrimination of good vs bad moves, rather than, say, complex reasoning). So, unless classificiation -in fact, classification in speech and image recognition and game-playing- is sufficient for the development of AGI, yes, we can say with pretty good certainty that there is no clear path from the current state of affairs to AGI and therefore, no good reason to assume AGI will be achieved within our lifetimes. Of course, we can't ever say anything with absolute certainty. Perhaps we live in a simulated universe and the Simulators will switch it all off tomorrow. Perhaps aliens will make first contact and hand us all the tech we're missing - or exterminate us all. Perhaps dread Cthulhu will rise from his sleep at R'lyeh Ia! Ia! etc. But- reasonable predictions can only be made based on what we know so far. The rest is only wild speculation that doesn't really serve anything, except of course to satisfy one's imagination.

YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago

>> Granted we are still far from AGI even with these new advances, but given the progress of the field in the last few years as resources pour in, we cannot say for certain that AGI won’t be reached in our lifetime. The progress of the field in the last few years is limited to improvements in performance on specific benchmarks all of which pertain to classification specifically and only in a few domains- speech recognition, image recognition and lately game-playing (the function of the deep nets in the AlphaGo family is still essentially discrimination of good vs bad moves, rather than, say, complex reasoning). So, unless classificiation -in fact, classification in speech and image recognition and game-playing- is sufficient for the development of AGI, yes, we can say with pretty good certainty that there is no clear path from the current state of affairs to AGI and therefore, no good reason to assume AGI will be achieved within our lifetimes. Of course, we can't ever say anything with absolute certainty. Perhaps we live in a simulated universe and the Simulators will switch it all off tomorrow. Perhaps aliens will make first contact and hand us all the tech we're missing - or exterminate us all. Perhaps dread Cthulhu will rise from his sleep at R'lyeh Ia! Ia! etc. But- reasonable predictions can only be made based on what we know so far. The rest is only wild speculation that doesn't really serve anything, except of course to satisfy one's imagination.