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This is what I've started thinking of as the ‘pretty dumb for a human’ take on AI. If your requirement for believing something is on the path to AGI is for it

This is what I've started thinking of as the ‘pretty dumb for a human’ take on AI. If your requirement for believing something is on the path to AGI is for it to practically already be AGI, it's no longer predictively meaningful. This sort of argument suffices to dismiss, for example, the possibility that today's humans evolved from apes, or even that today's humans could have come from pre-language, pre-civilization humans.

username90 6y ago
Problem is that the AI we have is nothing like biological intelligence. Our super computers can't even compete with the intelligence of an ant, how am I to believe that replicating human intelligence is around the corner or that we are even moving the right direction to get there?
- Veedrac 6y ago
  > Our super computers can't even compete with the intelligence of an ant I don't see what might spur anyone to claim this. It's obviously ridiculous.
  - username90 6y ago
    Can we put machines with grip claws in a random forest, no human oversight and make them build a house? Including foraging the lumber, foraging fuel etc? You need a huge amount of intelligence to navigate complex 3d environments, identify different kinds of objects in nature, identify different beings as threats of friends, identify suitable spots for building, handle errors when stuff you did failed etc. We are nowhere close to that level.
    - Veedrac 6y ago
      So therefore protein complexes are intelligent? This is literally the watchmaker argument with the nouns swapped out.
      - username90 6y ago
        What? Our computers can't even do the tasks that even the simplest of general purpose intelligences in the wild can, how can we say that we are making progress towards general purpose AI? If we were making progress, like first fruit fly, then ant, then a mouse etc, then I'd see it. But now? Its just toys. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is pretty easy to not be impressed when they still can't do simple things that insects can do.
        Veedrac 6y ago
        Our computers also don't know how to do all sorts of complex biological manufacturing that small groups of proteins can do inside cells. Thus your measure of intelligence also says that protein complexes are intelligent, but they aren't, so your argument is invalid. As I said, this is literally the watchmaker argument with the nouns swapped out. Ant minds are not general intelligences, they are programs created by natural evolution. Their pathfinding and identification and anthill-making and communication are all fixed programs in their genetics, not learnt during life. They cannot execute other programs.
        username90 6y ago
        > Ant minds are not general intelligences The fact that you don't consider ants as general intelligences means you agree that we aren't making progress towards general intelligences, since ants intelligence is way closer to general intelligence than any computer program we have. > Their pathfinding and identification and anthill-making and communication are all fixed programs in their genetics, not learnt during life. They only born with some bases, they intelligently comes up with fine tuned parameters to make them work in practice. Hence they learn. If you don't call this "intelligence" they you can't consider the "AI" we do today "intelligent". I mean, every model a computer executes was invented by a human, the computer only optimized the parameters. I mean, insects can learn to recognize arbitrary objects without anyone giving them training data or a reward function, they just do it on their own. That is a part of general intelligence. The way we do AI can never achieve that, since it always relies on human intelligence to decide all of those things meaning we just get out some optimized function that can fuzzy match input data.
qsort 6y ago
Not OP, but to be honest there isn't much at all that suggests significant steps have been made towards AGI. GPT-3 isn't AGI, it's the opposite of AGI. To be really frank, I doubt AGI is more than a teleological narrative.
- Veedrac 6y ago
  I disagree, but that wasn't the argument I was objecting to.

username90 6y ago

Problem is that the AI we have is nothing like biological intelligence. Our super computers can't even compete with the intelligence of an ant, how am I to believe that replicating human intelligence is around the corner or that we are even moving the right direction to get there?

Veedrac 6y ago
> Our super computers can't even compete with the intelligence of an ant I don't see what might spur anyone to claim this. It's obviously ridiculous.
- username90 6y ago
  Can we put machines with grip claws in a random forest, no human oversight and make them build a house? Including foraging the lumber, foraging fuel etc? You need a huge amount of intelligence to navigate complex 3d environments, identify different kinds of objects in nature, identify different beings as threats of friends, identify suitable spots for building, handle errors when stuff you did failed etc. We are nowhere close to that level.
  - Veedrac 6y ago
    So therefore protein complexes are intelligent? This is literally the watchmaker argument with the nouns swapped out.
    - username90 6y ago
      What? Our computers can't even do the tasks that even the simplest of general purpose intelligences in the wild can, how can we say that we are making progress towards general purpose AI? If we were making progress, like first fruit fly, then ant, then a mouse etc, then I'd see it. But now? Its just toys. Maybe I'm wrong, but it is pretty easy to not be impressed when they still can't do simple things that insects can do.
      - Veedrac 6y ago
        Our computers also don't know how to do all sorts of complex biological manufacturing that small groups of proteins can do inside cells. Thus your measure of intelligence also says that protein complexes are intelligent, but they aren't, so your argument is invalid. As I said, this is literally the watchmaker argument with the nouns swapped out. Ant minds are not general intelligences, they are programs created by natural evolution. Their pathfinding and identification and anthill-making and communication are all fixed programs in their genetics, not learnt during life. They cannot execute other programs.
        username90 6y ago
        > Ant minds are not general intelligences The fact that you don't consider ants as general intelligences means you agree that we aren't making progress towards general intelligences, since ants intelligence is way closer to general intelligence than any computer program we have. > Their pathfinding and identification and anthill-making and communication are all fixed programs in their genetics, not learnt during life. They only born with some bases, they intelligently comes up with fine tuned parameters to make them work in practice. Hence they learn. If you don't call this "intelligence" they you can't consider the "AI" we do today "intelligent". I mean, every model a computer executes was invented by a human, the computer only optimized the parameters. I mean, insects can learn to recognize arbitrary objects without anyone giving them training data or a reward function, they just do it on their own. That is a part of general intelligence. The way we do AI can never achieve that, since it always relies on human intelligence to decide all of those things meaning we just get out some optimized function that can fuzzy match input data.

qsort 6y ago

Not OP, but to be honest there isn't much at all that suggests significant steps have been made towards AGI. GPT-3 isn't AGI, it's the opposite of AGI. To be really frank, I doubt AGI is more than a teleological narrative.

Veedrac 6y ago
I disagree, but that wasn't the argument I was objecting to.