4 ms·

Like most anti-AGI arguments, this one disproves humans, and is therefore wrong.

bruce343434 5y ago
Do humans fit in 10TB? Do humans fit in our computational model at all? Neurons aren't simple callback closures or matrices, and neurons don't even form the full picture.
- supperburg 5y ago
  A lot of the brain is for unrelated things. Imagine how many neurons you eliminate by excluding the cerebellum or the brain stem. And if you carved away the brain until only the intellect remained, distilling its digital equivalent could reduce its size even more. And if it were just the algorithm, I think 10TB would be enough.
  - cantrevealname 5y ago
    >> Do humans fit in 10TB? > If it were just the algorithm, I think 10TB would be enough Just thinking about it makes me shiver. I had been assuming that AGI or strong AI needed enormous advances in hardware like quantum computing or numerous iterations of Moore's Law. Would it be correct to say that the right 10TB bit pattern might give us strong AI on today's commodity hardware -- at least in theory?
    - supperburg 5y ago
      It’s such a fascinating question. Given some domestic computer, what is the most intelligent program it might be able to run in something like real-time? My intuition is that domestic computers could achieve a sparse intellect but maybe not a rich sensory relationship with the physical world. With every year we expand our vast collective computational resources. It’s like a powder keg. It’s sitting dormant just waiting for a good program to be stumbled upon. I hope I’m not alive when that happens
    - wan23 5y ago
      Human intelligence is about more than just the brain. How intelligent would you be if you grew up in a sensory deprivation tank? If you didn't need to eat, if you didn't crave social interactions. Without family or community. If you met a human who grew up this way, they might not seem particularly intelligent either.
      - supperburg 5y ago
        > more than just the brain This is objectively wrong
bhntr3 5y ago
This isn't an anti-AGI argument and it doesn't disprove humans. Humans have the same problem. It's harder to write a program to do a thing than it is to just do the thing. It's appealing to think we can just make a program that learns programs and then use that to learn to do anything computable. But this is a well studied field and it turns out that when you generalize a learning problem that way you make the learning problem a lot harder. The space of programs that could possibly.identify dogs in images is much much much larger than the space of images that contain dogs. The images are bounded by the number of pixels in the image times the color depth. What is the space of programs bounded by? 10TB? That's roughly 256^10000000000 programs. That's just a stupidly large number. Obviously not every 10TB string is a valid program. You can reduce that number. But what current research in program synthesis tells us is that you can't reduce it as much as you might hope. So the point is that, just like for humans, it's easier to learn to do a thing than it is to learn to write a program to do a thing.
- Veedrac 5y ago
  > This isn't an anti-AGI argument and it doesn't disprove humans. You're saying you can't find intelligent programs this way because the search space is large. That's an anti-AGI argument, and it's fallacious because humans evolved. Yes, you can only search an infinitesimal subset of the search space. The same is true for DNA. The argument is clearly invalid without at least reference to properties that gradient descent has, or that evolution has but it does not, which you have not done. It is wrong for the same reasons the watchmaker analogy is.

Do humans fit in 10TB? Do humans fit in our computational model at all? Neurons aren't simple callback closures or matrices, and neurons don't even form the full picture.

supperburg 5y ago
A lot of the brain is for unrelated things. Imagine how many neurons you eliminate by excluding the cerebellum or the brain stem. And if you carved away the brain until only the intellect remained, distilling its digital equivalent could reduce its size even more. And if it were just the algorithm, I think 10TB would be enough.
- cantrevealname 5y ago
  >> Do humans fit in 10TB? > If it were just the algorithm, I think 10TB would be enough Just thinking about it makes me shiver. I had been assuming that AGI or strong AI needed enormous advances in hardware like quantum computing or numerous iterations of Moore's Law. Would it be correct to say that the right 10TB bit pattern might give us strong AI on today's commodity hardware -- at least in theory?
  - supperburg 5y ago
    It’s such a fascinating question. Given some domestic computer, what is the most intelligent program it might be able to run in something like real-time? My intuition is that domestic computers could achieve a sparse intellect but maybe not a rich sensory relationship with the physical world. With every year we expand our vast collective computational resources. It’s like a powder keg. It’s sitting dormant just waiting for a good program to be stumbled upon. I hope I’m not alive when that happens
  - wan23 5y ago
    Human intelligence is about more than just the brain. How intelligent would you be if you grew up in a sensory deprivation tank? If you didn't need to eat, if you didn't crave social interactions. Without family or community. If you met a human who grew up this way, they might not seem particularly intelligent either.
    - supperburg 5y ago
      > more than just the brain This is objectively wrong

bhntr3 5y ago

This isn't an anti-AGI argument and it doesn't disprove humans. Humans have the same problem. It's harder to write a program to do a thing than it is to just do the thing. It's appealing to think we can just make a program that learns programs and then use that to learn to do anything computable. But this is a well studied field and it turns out that when you generalize a learning problem that way you make the learning problem a lot harder. The space of programs that could possibly.identify dogs in images is much much much larger than the space of images that contain dogs. The images are bounded by the number of pixels in the image times the color depth. What is the space of programs bounded by? 10TB? That's roughly 256^10000000000 programs. That's just a stupidly large number. Obviously not every 10TB string is a valid program. You can reduce that number. But what current research in program synthesis tells us is that you can't reduce it as much as you might hope. So the point is that, just like for humans, it's easier to learn to do a thing than it is to learn to write a program to do a thing.

Veedrac 5y ago
> This isn't an anti-AGI argument and it doesn't disprove humans. You're saying you can't find intelligent programs this way because the search space is large. That's an anti-AGI argument, and it's fallacious because humans evolved. Yes, you can only search an infinitesimal subset of the search space. The same is true for DNA. The argument is clearly invalid without at least reference to properties that gradient descent has, or that evolution has but it does not, which you have not done. It is wrong for the same reasons the watchmaker analogy is.