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Just because you can't figure out how to define/test superhuman intelligence, doesn't mean it can't exist. > If you think you're specific business case might r

Just because you can't figure out how to define/test superhuman intelligence, doesn't mean it can't exist. > If you think you're specific business case might require an AGI, feel free to hire one of the 3 billion people living in South East Asia that will gladly help you with tasks for a few dollars an hour. How can a person writing an article about AGI fail to understand what AGI means so badly? You're complaining that the kind of intelligences you can hire for $2/hour aren't useful/powerful enough. What does that have to do with anything? By your own argument, people have already created very powerful intelligences - Elon Musk, Alan Turing, etc. 100 of those, with unlimited memory, internet access, and faster thinking speed would already be extremely powerful, enough to take over the world and do whatever they wish with it. The whole idea of human beings being the pinnacle of intelligence always seemed ridiculous to me. We're the dumbest animals capable of discussing the concept of intelligence. What, the first few somewhat intelligent apes happen to also bump into the theoretical limit for intelligence? Even minor variation in our genes are enough to account for the difference between Elon Musk and a Joe from the gas station who spends his life in a trailer park, sniffing glue and trying to seduce his cousin. And just because there are enough Joe's already, artificial superintelligence can't exist or be useful? Having said that, even Joe-level AI's would transform the world more dramatically than any invention before that - they would replace human labor.

throwawaymath 7y ago
> 100 of those, with unlimited memory, internet access, and faster thinking speed would already be extremely powerful, enough to take over the world and do whatever they wish with it. Why? What makes you confident in this assertion? To whoever has downvoted: I doubt it. Surely if you think this is so obvious that my question seems disingenuous, you can clearly articulate why the claim has substantial credibility?
- rayalez 7y ago
  Existence of Elon Musk's brain proves that Elon-Musk level intelligence is possible. The fact that Elon Musk (and similar brains) already have a ridiculous amount of power and are using it to change the world proves that Elon-Musk level intelligence is enough to gain a lot of power and change the world. Imagining a team of 100 Elon Musks with unlimited memory/energy/etc/etc taking over the world is not such a stretch.
  - throwawaymath 7y ago
    Why is it not a stretch? This is not a rhetorical question (in the Socratic sense) - what I'm asking for is precision. If you literally mean infinite memory, your claim is trivially correct regardless of whether we postulate a team of 100 Elon Musks or a team of any 100 replicated adult humans in the world. Even a modest human intelligence with access to infinite memory can eventually do anything possible in a computational sense. So let's pare that back a bit, because infinities break thought experiments. Do you mean something like 100 Elon Musks, each with a datacenter's worth of GPUs? Is that sufficiently many to conquer the Earth and do what they wish? If so, why? How would they do it? If you don't have a realistic example for how they'd do it, why are you confident they can?
    - rayalez 7y ago
      All I'm saying is that much dumber people have been known to get much closer to taking over the world. Obviously "infinite memory" and "taking over the world" are exaggerations. By "infinite memory" I mean "much more than any human have ever had, enough to memorize the internet". And by "taking over the world" I mean "be able to amass enough power to become a serious threat". Humans, with human intelligence have already been way too close to taking over the world or causing apocalypse or whatever. If we're talking about non-aligned AGI, we're talking, at the very least, about an ElonMusk+ powered sociopath. Isn't that already a cause for concern? Or, from a different perspective, imagine a business that employs 100 Elon Musks. The article claims that AGIs already exists and they're "useless". Do they? Are they?
      - oreo83 7y ago
        "All I'm saying is that much dumber people have been known to get much closer to taking over the world." Like who?
      - ddxxdd 7y ago
        This entire comment thread is populated by people who did not read and comtemplate the posted article. James Clerk Maxwell was a genius, likely more intelligent than Musk, who did not take over the world. If James Clerk Maxwell was born 10,000 years earlier, he would likely be a respected shaman or an intelligent warrior, but he would not have derived the laws of Electromagnetism without 10,000 years of scientific development. Likewise, Elon Musk is nothing without the experimentation, empiricism, and the sum total of human knowledge accumulated to this day. Paraphrasing the linked article, a superintelligent AGI will do nothing because physical resources and crystallized empirical knowledge is the bottleneck to human progress. Not intelligence. Now I would like to see AGI fanatics address that core thesis.

throwawaymath 7y ago

> 100 of those, with unlimited memory, internet access, and faster thinking speed would already be extremely powerful, enough to take over the world and do whatever they wish with it. Why? What makes you confident in this assertion? To whoever has downvoted: I doubt it. Surely if you think this is so obvious that my question seems disingenuous, you can clearly articulate why the claim has substantial credibility?

rayalez 7y ago
Existence of Elon Musk's brain proves that Elon-Musk level intelligence is possible. The fact that Elon Musk (and similar brains) already have a ridiculous amount of power and are using it to change the world proves that Elon-Musk level intelligence is enough to gain a lot of power and change the world. Imagining a team of 100 Elon Musks with unlimited memory/energy/etc/etc taking over the world is not such a stretch.
- throwawaymath 7y ago
  Why is it not a stretch? This is not a rhetorical question (in the Socratic sense) - what I'm asking for is precision. If you literally mean infinite memory, your claim is trivially correct regardless of whether we postulate a team of 100 Elon Musks or a team of any 100 replicated adult humans in the world. Even a modest human intelligence with access to infinite memory can eventually do anything possible in a computational sense. So let's pare that back a bit, because infinities break thought experiments. Do you mean something like 100 Elon Musks, each with a datacenter's worth of GPUs? Is that sufficiently many to conquer the Earth and do what they wish? If so, why? How would they do it? If you don't have a realistic example for how they'd do it, why are you confident they can?
  - rayalez 7y ago
    All I'm saying is that much dumber people have been known to get much closer to taking over the world. Obviously "infinite memory" and "taking over the world" are exaggerations. By "infinite memory" I mean "much more than any human have ever had, enough to memorize the internet". And by "taking over the world" I mean "be able to amass enough power to become a serious threat". Humans, with human intelligence have already been way too close to taking over the world or causing apocalypse or whatever. If we're talking about non-aligned AGI, we're talking, at the very least, about an ElonMusk+ powered sociopath. Isn't that already a cause for concern? Or, from a different perspective, imagine a business that employs 100 Elon Musks. The article claims that AGIs already exists and they're "useless". Do they? Are they?
    - oreo83 7y ago
      "All I'm saying is that much dumber people have been known to get much closer to taking over the world." Like who?
    - ddxxdd 7y ago
      This entire comment thread is populated by people who did not read and comtemplate the posted article. James Clerk Maxwell was a genius, likely more intelligent than Musk, who did not take over the world. If James Clerk Maxwell was born 10,000 years earlier, he would likely be a respected shaman or an intelligent warrior, but he would not have derived the laws of Electromagnetism without 10,000 years of scientific development. Likewise, Elon Musk is nothing without the experimentation, empiricism, and the sum total of human knowledge accumulated to this day. Paraphrasing the linked article, a superintelligent AGI will do nothing because physical resources and crystallized empirical knowledge is the bottleneck to human progress. Not intelligence. Now I would like to see AGI fanatics address that core thesis.