3 ms·

Could indeed be a trade-off between speed vs complexity and efficiency. Maybe there will be transistor-based human-level AGI soon, but I guess it would require

by qayxc 5y ago

Could indeed be a trade-off between speed vs complexity and efficiency. Maybe there will be transistor-based human-level AGI soon, but I guess it would require several kilowatts of power compared to the 20 or so watts a human brain requires.

short_sells_poo 5y ago
> Maybe there will be transistor-based human-level AGI soon, but I guess it would require several kilowatts of power compared to the 20 or so watts a human brain requires Given that entire datacenters don't come close to an AGI, let alone a human level one, I fear "several kilowatts of power" is lowballing it by a significant number of orders of magnitude. More to the point, we don't even know how or what gives rise to a general intelligence, and even defining it is basically a philosophical question. To me, the optimism of some AI enthusiasts (and I don't mean specifically the parent) feels like cavemen contemplating an expedition to the stars shortly after they invented the sling. I think the chances of us arriving to anything close to an AGI iteratively based on our current capabilities is a pipe dream.
ben_w 5y ago
The lowest lowball estimate I’ve seen for the computational capacity of the human brain is 20e15 FLOPS (Kurzweil, 1999), and that would require 2/3 of a megawatt with the current best ranked supercomputer on the Green500 list. There are already several computers more powerful than this that don’t appear close to a working full brain emulation, and we definitely don’t understand intelligence well enough yet to engineer something like ourselves, so it’s reasonable to be skeptical of estimates saying we’ll be at the kilowatts level “soon” even if it turns out we’re just missing a step which will be obvious in hindsight. (Unless by “soon” you mean 15 years; I don’t want to bet on anything on that timescale).
- qayxc 5y ago
  > Unless by “soon” you mean 15 years; I don’t want to bet on anything on that timescale Well, I'm old so by "soon" I mean within my lifetime, e.g. the next 3 to 4 decades. edit: to clarify a little, when the term AI was first coined by McCarthy in 1956, researchers were confident in cracking AGI within a decade. Then AI-Winter came and people became more cautious. So when I say "soon", I mean it's probably not going to be another 65 years, but also not 5 months or 5 years (unexpected breakthroughs aside).

by qayxc 5y ago

short_sells_poo 5y ago

> Maybe there will be transistor-based human-level AGI soon, but I guess it would require several kilowatts of power compared to the 20 or so watts a human brain requires Given that entire datacenters don't come close to an AGI, let alone a human level one, I fear "several kilowatts of power" is lowballing it by a significant number of orders of magnitude. More to the point, we don't even know how or what gives rise to a general intelligence, and even defining it is basically a philosophical question. To me, the optimism of some AI enthusiasts (and I don't mean specifically the parent) feels like cavemen contemplating an expedition to the stars shortly after they invented the sling. I think the chances of us arriving to anything close to an AGI iteratively based on our current capabilities is a pipe dream.

ben_w 5y ago

The lowest lowball estimate I’ve seen for the computational capacity of the human brain is 20e15 FLOPS (Kurzweil, 1999), and that would require 2/3 of a megawatt with the current best ranked supercomputer on the Green500 list. There are already several computers more powerful than this that don’t appear close to a working full brain emulation, and we definitely don’t understand intelligence well enough yet to engineer something like ourselves, so it’s reasonable to be skeptical of estimates saying we’ll be at the kilowatts level “soon” even if it turns out we’re just missing a step which will be obvious in hindsight. (Unless by “soon” you mean 15 years; I don’t want to bet on anything on that timescale).

qayxc 5y ago
> Unless by “soon” you mean 15 years; I don’t want to bet on anything on that timescale Well, I'm old so by "soon" I mean within my lifetime, e.g. the next 3 to 4 decades. edit: to clarify a little, when the term AI was first coined by McCarthy in 1956, researchers were confident in cracking AGI within a decade. Then AI-Winter came and people became more cautious. So when I say "soon", I mean it's probably not going to be another 65 years, but also not 5 months or 5 years (unexpected breakthroughs aside).