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>> We're not going to have AGI any time soon. In your mind, how many inventions are we from GAI? 1? 1000? Also, given we have our very brightest working in th

>> We're not going to have AGI any time soon. In your mind, how many inventions are we from GAI? 1? 1000? Also, given we have our very brightest working in the problem space (MS, Google, FB, OpenAI ...) how long would each remaining invention take? It seems plausible to me that we are only one invention from GAI, one novel combination of two or more existing solutions and that this may come from anyone and at any time.

dorkwood 7y ago
Applying this method of thinking, is there anything that we aren't one invention away from?
- misterman0 7y ago
  I'm just trying to stay positive. If you talk optimistically about AI (or big data for that matter) you quickly get downvoted these days. I'm curious as to why that is. I thought this was 'marica. Isn't this 'marica? Edit: my apologies, that was condescending. I should have finished of with a wink of an eye.
  - striking 7y ago
    There's optimism and there's being too vague to disprove. You might be able to dodge downvotes by adding more objective content to your comments. History has played out a particular way quite a few times (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter). If you can tell us why today isn't like all the other days using facts, I'll bet the downvotes will stop.
- solveit 7y ago
  Large scale colonization of Mars would require multiple inventions. We know this because we have a good understanding of what a successful colonization of Mars entails, and have a pretty good idea of the main technical obstacles. AGI, on the other hand, might be one breakthrough away or two hundred breakthroughs away. We just have no idea what makes intelligence tick.
onion2k 7y ago
We've drawn a couple of circles and we want to draw the rest of the owl, and you're telling us there's only one step.
- misterman0 7y ago
  Yes. Because we don't know it is an owl we should draw. It's equally likely AI is just three circles combined.
  - lsc 7y ago
    exactly... we don't even have a definition of consciousness that is better than Jacobellis v. Ohio - For that matter, I'm not sure we even have it that good. I'm not sure I'd recognize a non-human consciousness when I saw it. I'm not sure anyone would. I mean, sure, I can totally see the idea that consciousness is maybe some emergent property of complex systems... in which case, sure, we could stumble upon it by accident. That is totally possible; we're creating complex self-replicating systems all over the place. But as far as intentionally constructing the thing that will come after humanity? we can't do that until we know what, exactly, it is we are constructing, and as far as I can tell, we're pretty far away from any idea of exactly what that is.
    - pure-awesome 7y ago
      Is consciousness a necessary component for AGI, though?
      - lsc 7y ago
        >Is consciousness a necessary component for AGI, though? I always thought so. Like, without volition, it's just a really good natural language tool, and not a general intelligence. What would an artificial general intelligence without consciousness look like to you?
        AstralStorm 7y ago
deleted 7y ago
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EliRivers 7y ago
General intelligence? Does it even exist? I find the evidence that humans have it unconvincing, and I've seen nothing that makes me think we're "one invention" away. The direction of machine learning seems to be specialised tasks on specialised data sets; surely the very opposite of any kind of general intelligence.
- z3phyr 7y ago
  So get whatever intelligence human have in computers. That was the goal. Call it general intelligence or call it x.
  - EliRivers 7y ago
    Human intelligence works well [0] from inside human shaped objects with human shaped biology, in human shaped societies, and to no small degree for doing human-style tasks. I am not convinced that putting that human intelligence, whatever it is, into a silicon box will give us the results we hope for (or is even a sensible ambition, given the degree to which our intelligence is part of our biology). [0] Actually, maybe it doesn't work really well - maybe it's a slow-motion car crash over millions of years. But it works well enough that we clearly want more of it.
    - antepodius 7y ago
      Whatever human intelligence is, there's clearly some part of it that can do things like design computers and build houses. That part, at least, people would like to be able to match in performance using machines. It's 'intelligence' in the sense of being able to do things like think up clever strategies in novel environments that people want to put in a silicon box.
      - EliRivers 7y ago
        If that is the goal, it's certainly not what the current batch of machine-learning and hype-train riders are chasing. They (or at least, the ones doing it via huge training sets) seem to be working on the very opposite of novel environment situations. I wonder if anyone is seriously pursuing that.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
That's exactly what they thought in the 1950s and 1960s 1970s and 1980s. And oh by the way, our brightest minds were working on it then too.

dorkwood 7y ago

Applying this method of thinking, is there anything that we aren't one invention away from?

misterman0 7y ago
I'm just trying to stay positive. If you talk optimistically about AI (or big data for that matter) you quickly get downvoted these days. I'm curious as to why that is. I thought this was 'marica. Isn't this 'marica? Edit: my apologies, that was condescending. I should have finished of with a wink of an eye.
- striking 7y ago
  There's optimism and there's being too vague to disprove. You might be able to dodge downvotes by adding more objective content to your comments. History has played out a particular way quite a few times (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter). If you can tell us why today isn't like all the other days using facts, I'll bet the downvotes will stop.
solveit 7y ago
Large scale colonization of Mars would require multiple inventions. We know this because we have a good understanding of what a successful colonization of Mars entails, and have a pretty good idea of the main technical obstacles. AGI, on the other hand, might be one breakthrough away or two hundred breakthroughs away. We just have no idea what makes intelligence tick.

onion2k 7y ago

We've drawn a couple of circles and we want to draw the rest of the owl, and you're telling us there's only one step.

misterman0 7y ago
Yes. Because we don't know it is an owl we should draw. It's equally likely AI is just three circles combined.
- lsc 7y ago
  exactly... we don't even have a definition of consciousness that is better than Jacobellis v. Ohio - For that matter, I'm not sure we even have it that good. I'm not sure I'd recognize a non-human consciousness when I saw it. I'm not sure anyone would. I mean, sure, I can totally see the idea that consciousness is maybe some emergent property of complex systems... in which case, sure, we could stumble upon it by accident. That is totally possible; we're creating complex self-replicating systems all over the place. But as far as intentionally constructing the thing that will come after humanity? we can't do that until we know what, exactly, it is we are constructing, and as far as I can tell, we're pretty far away from any idea of exactly what that is.
  - pure-awesome 7y ago
    Is consciousness a necessary component for AGI, though?
    - lsc 7y ago
      >Is consciousness a necessary component for AGI, though? I always thought so. Like, without volition, it's just a really good natural language tool, and not a general intelligence. What would an artificial general intelligence without consciousness look like to you?
      - AstralStorm 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

EliRivers 7y ago

General intelligence? Does it even exist? I find the evidence that humans have it unconvincing, and I've seen nothing that makes me think we're "one invention" away. The direction of machine learning seems to be specialised tasks on specialised data sets; surely the very opposite of any kind of general intelligence.

z3phyr 7y ago
So get whatever intelligence human have in computers. That was the goal. Call it general intelligence or call it x.
- EliRivers 7y ago
  Human intelligence works well [0] from inside human shaped objects with human shaped biology, in human shaped societies, and to no small degree for doing human-style tasks. I am not convinced that putting that human intelligence, whatever it is, into a silicon box will give us the results we hope for (or is even a sensible ambition, given the degree to which our intelligence is part of our biology). [0] Actually, maybe it doesn't work really well - maybe it's a slow-motion car crash over millions of years. But it works well enough that we clearly want more of it.
  - antepodius 7y ago
    Whatever human intelligence is, there's clearly some part of it that can do things like design computers and build houses. That part, at least, people would like to be able to match in performance using machines. It's 'intelligence' in the sense of being able to do things like think up clever strategies in novel environments that people want to put in a silicon box.
    - EliRivers 7y ago
      If that is the goal, it's certainly not what the current batch of machine-learning and hype-train riders are chasing. They (or at least, the ones doing it via huge training sets) seem to be working on the very opposite of novel environment situations. I wonder if anyone is seriously pursuing that.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

That's exactly what they thought in the 1950s and 1960s 1970s and 1980s. And oh by the way, our brightest minds were working on it then too.