If a client/muggle asks me to build an “AI” I’ll be wary that their “spec” is sometimes just examples of what the “AI” should be able to do: play chess, write a

If a client/muggle asks me to build an “AI” I’ll be wary that their “spec” is sometimes just examples of what the “AI” should be able to do: play chess, write a poem. In their mental model, the AI is far from defined by these capabilities. They won’t be happy unless there’s an actual AGI whose capabilities happen to overlap with the spec. So my point is historically we have cheated our way out of defining “intelligence” and instead given necessary but insufficient examples. I think this is the mechanism behind the goalpost-shifting in “AI”. That’s the metaphor: it would clearly be absurd for engineers to define Jesus by some examples of capabilities. People who are waiting for the second coming won’t be satisfied. In the lab we maybe should define AI by some set of capabilities. But clients, journalists etc. picture the Hollywood version, and narrowly fulfilling their spec won’t actually satisfy them.