> All the AIs that exist today operate by fitting data. And to be able to perform a useful task it has to have well defined parameters and fit the data accordin

> All the AIs that exist today operate by fitting data. And to be able to perform a useful task it has to have well defined parameters and fit the data according to them. I’m not sure an AI that operates outside of these confinements have even been conceived of. Such an AI has absolutely been conceived of. In Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, Nick Bostrom goes over the ways such an AI could exist, and poses some scenarios about how a recursively self-improving AI could "take off" and exceed human intellectual capacity on its own. Moreover, we're already building such AIs (in a limited fashion). Deepmind recently made an AI that can beat all Atari games [1]. The AI wasn't given "well defined parameters". It was just shown the game, and it figured out, on its own, how to map inputs to actions on the screen, and which actions resulted in progress towards winning the game. Then, the same AI went on to do this over and over again, eventually beating all 57 Atari games. Yes, you can argue that this is still a limited example. However it is an example that shows that AIs are capable of generalized learning. There's nothing, in principle, that prevents a domain-specific AI from learning and improving at other problem domains. The AI that I'm conceiving of is a supersonic jet. This AI is closer to the Wright Flyer. However, once you have a Wright Flyer, supersonic jets aren't that far away. > To make an AI that outperforms humans in any task has not been proven to be possible (to my knowledge) not even in theory. An airplane will fly faster, higher and with more cargo then a flock of geese, but a flock of geese reproduce, communicate with each other, digest grass, etc. An airplane will not outperform a flock of geese in any task, just the tasks which the airplane is optimized for. That's fair, but besides the point. The AI doesn't have to be better than humans at everything that humans can do. The AI just has to beat humans at everything that's economically valuable. When all jobs get eaten by the AI, it's cold comfort to me that the AI is still worse than humans at, say, enjoying a nice cup of tea. [1]: https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/01/974997/deepminds-ai-57-atari-games-but-its-still-not-versatile-enough/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/04/01/974997/deepminds...