5 ms·

I like to keep personal opinions out of statistical data about opinions, since they are very different qualities of argument. Any individual take doesn't meanin

I like to keep personal opinions out of statistical data about opinions, since they are very different qualities of argument. Any individual take doesn't meaningfully affect the distribution of opinions. The key is that there is no argument from consensus to be made; smart people disagree, AGI within our lifetimes is not a niche expectation. Anyhow, I suspect you're not familiar with ML research, since eg. there are plenty of non-feedforward networks available. I also don't think much of this really matters; it is absurdly anthropocentric to expect ‘motivation to stay alive’ to be fundamental to intelligence.

nl 6y ago
Name an actual active ML researcher who believes human level AGI is likely within our lifetime. Good researchers will never rule it out of course but I don't know any who think it is likely (I work in the field).
- Veedrac 6y ago
  Demis Hassabis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0962biiZa4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0962biiZa4, older https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgd3OK5DZWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgd3OK5DZWI (NB ‘likely’ ≠ ‘>50%’, not sure what his percentage would be) I can give more but I did upstream link to a paper on this so it seems pretty pointless.
  - nl 6y ago
    Do you have a timestamp for a specific quote? I can point at "Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis: AGI is nowhere close to being a reality" https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/17/geoffrey-hinton-and-demis-hassabis-agi-is-nowhere-close-to-being-a-reality/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/17/geoffrey-hinton-and-demis... and "Martin Ford interviewed 23 of the most prominent men and women who are working in AI today, including DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Google AI Chief Jeff Dean, and Stanford AI director Fei-Fei Li. In an informal survey, Ford asked each of them to guess by which year there will be at least a 50 percent chance of AGI being built.... Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and director of engineering at Google, suggested that by 2029, there would be a 50 percent chance of AGI being built, and Rodney Brooks, roboticist and co-founder of iRobot, went for 2200. The rest of the guesses were scattered between these two extremes, with the average estimate being 2099 — 81 years from now." https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114362/ai-artificial-general-intelligence-when-achieved-martin-ford-book https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114362/ai-artificial-g...
    - Veedrac 6y ago
      > Do you have a timestamp for a specific quote? I don't think there's a single timestamp for this since the exact question was never asked. But the gist is very explicit in his numerous talks (which note includes both the Future of Life Institute and Singularity Summit), and I think https://youtu.be/d-bvsJWmqlc?t=203 https://youtu.be/d-bvsJWmqlc?t=203 sums it up beyond reasonable doubt. > I can point at "Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis: AGI is nowhere close to being a reality" This is a disaster of a headline, since while Hinton does, Hassabis never says that. > The rest of the guesses were scattered between these two extremes, with the average estimate being 2099 — 81 years from now. Which agrees with my point.

nl 6y ago

Name an actual active ML researcher who believes human level AGI is likely within our lifetime. Good researchers will never rule it out of course but I don't know any who think it is likely (I work in the field).

Veedrac 6y ago
Demis Hassabis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0962biiZa4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h0962biiZa4, older https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgd3OK5DZWI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qgd3OK5DZWI (NB ‘likely’ ≠ ‘>50%’, not sure what his percentage would be) I can give more but I did upstream link to a paper on this so it seems pretty pointless.
- nl 6y ago
  Do you have a timestamp for a specific quote? I can point at "Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis: AGI is nowhere close to being a reality" https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/17/geoffrey-hinton-and-demis-hassabis-agi-is-nowhere-close-to-being-a-reality/ https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/17/geoffrey-hinton-and-demis... and "Martin Ford interviewed 23 of the most prominent men and women who are working in AI today, including DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis, Google AI Chief Jeff Dean, and Stanford AI director Fei-Fei Li. In an informal survey, Ford asked each of them to guess by which year there will be at least a 50 percent chance of AGI being built.... Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and director of engineering at Google, suggested that by 2029, there would be a 50 percent chance of AGI being built, and Rodney Brooks, roboticist and co-founder of iRobot, went for 2200. The rest of the guesses were scattered between these two extremes, with the average estimate being 2099 — 81 years from now." https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114362/ai-artificial-general-intelligence-when-achieved-martin-ford-book https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/27/18114362/ai-artificial-g...
  - Veedrac 6y ago
    > Do you have a timestamp for a specific quote? I don't think there's a single timestamp for this since the exact question was never asked. But the gist is very explicit in his numerous talks (which note includes both the Future of Life Institute and Singularity Summit), and I think https://youtu.be/d-bvsJWmqlc?t=203 https://youtu.be/d-bvsJWmqlc?t=203 sums it up beyond reasonable doubt. > I can point at "Geoffrey Hinton and Demis Hassabis: AGI is nowhere close to being a reality" This is a disaster of a headline, since while Hinton does, Hassabis never says that. > The rest of the guesses were scattered between these two extremes, with the average estimate being 2099 — 81 years from now. Which agrees with my point.