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I’m surprised at the amount of comments greatly downplaying the likelihood of AGI in the coming decades or saying that is impossible. The rate of progress is A

I’m surprised at the amount of comments greatly downplaying the likelihood of AGI in the coming decades or saying that is impossible. The rate of progress is AI technologies seems absolutely incredible to me. Sure, there is tons of hype and noise to weed through. And much of the technology and research hasn’t yet found commercial applications. But the progress in recent decades is objectively incredible. We are reaching a point where all games are basically falling to AI. Go, no-limit hold ‘em (poker), StarCraft, Dota, and so on. In other domains, we have GPT-3 and AlphaFold. And I’m sure there are many developments I’m not aware of. From what I can tell, GPT-3 is mainly significant for challenging that notion that increased scale can’t be the primary factor in a significant AI developments. The jury is still out, but my understanding is that it demonstrated that modest tweaks to existing algorithms with a massive increase in model size can result large performance improvements. GPT-3 had quite limited “memory”, which is one of the reasons it struggled with coherency. How would a model 10x - 100x larger than GPT-3 with a significantly enhanced memory perform? What if it was trained to predict the next frame in video in addition to the next sequence of text blobs? No one knows how close we are. It will likely happen quickly without many people knowing it is coming soon. It will seem “impossible” to most even as the last few pieces are falling in place. Major technological paradigm shifts usually happen unexpectedly, as history shows us. I’m rambling a bit (If I had more time / skill I would have written a shorter comment ;). Suffice to say I’m surprised by the number of confident proclamations against AGI. Our brains are amazing. But they aren’t magic.

nradov 5y ago
So far the rate of progress towards AGI is zero. The AI technologies we have today are cute parlor tricks and even have some limited business value but they haven't gotten us any closer to a real AGI.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- dwaltrip 5y ago
  In your opinion, what would a world where we were 25% or 50% of the way towards AGI look like?
  - nradov 5y ago
    Show me a computer that can learn and problem solve in novel situations as well as a mouse and I'll believe that we're some percentage of the way towards AGI. So far we're not even at the worm equivalent level yet.
    - lostmsu 5y ago
      Huh? Have you seen mice play chess? AlphaZero beats humans without ever seeing chess plays by others - self-play only.
      - nradov 5y ago
        Huh? Have you seen a computer forage for food, hide from predators, and compete for mates? AlphaZero is a cool toy but it plays a relatively simple game with well defined rules and success criteria. None of that is even remotely applicable to AGI.
        lostmsu 5y ago
        This is a nonsensical argument. Computers do not eat, and do not have predators or mates. You do not measure if cars are super horses in terms of hauling by comparing how fast they can move legs in a certain order. AlphaZero does not just play one game, it can play many, quite possibly at the same time.
  - dorkwood 5y ago
    To me, a system that was 50% towards AGI would demonstrate thinking and logic similar to the way we experience it in dreams.
analog31 5y ago
I think there needs to be a term for things that are in-between possible and impossible. This occurred to me in discussions about faster-than-light travel. Surely there are things that are strictly possible, like, anything that's already happening. Motorboats are strictly possible. Maybe some things are strictly impossible, like, squaring the circle. There may be some things that are impossible but that we will never know. In between these two realms are ideas that can be suggested without evidence but yet taken quite seriously. Many of these things require overturning bodies of knowledge that are presently considered to be pretty robust, or developing entirely new ways of thinking. Some are contradictory to other things residing at the same level of possibility. Terms such as "magic" are divisive and don't seem to capture the essence. The next question is whether an in-between level of possibility serves any useful purpose, and if it's distinguishable as a unique condition. Or, as a practical matter, whether it can be lumped in with things that are strictly impossible. How does my life change if the things that can be suggested without evidence deserve a category different than strict impossibility?
- heckerhut 5y ago
  I think you’re on to something. You should explore that in an essay.
eximius 5y ago
AGI is orders of magnitude more complex than the toys we're playing with in machine learning today. It's like building a factory and then expecting factories that build themselves to be right around the corner. They're just such different beasts and so far away from each other.

nradov 5y ago

So far the rate of progress towards AGI is zero. The AI technologies we have today are cute parlor tricks and even have some limited business value but they haven't gotten us any closer to a real AGI.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
dwaltrip 5y ago
In your opinion, what would a world where we were 25% or 50% of the way towards AGI look like?
- nradov 5y ago
  Show me a computer that can learn and problem solve in novel situations as well as a mouse and I'll believe that we're some percentage of the way towards AGI. So far we're not even at the worm equivalent level yet.
  - lostmsu 5y ago
    Huh? Have you seen mice play chess? AlphaZero beats humans without ever seeing chess plays by others - self-play only.
    - nradov 5y ago
      Huh? Have you seen a computer forage for food, hide from predators, and compete for mates? AlphaZero is a cool toy but it plays a relatively simple game with well defined rules and success criteria. None of that is even remotely applicable to AGI.
      - lostmsu 5y ago
        This is a nonsensical argument. Computers do not eat, and do not have predators or mates. You do not measure if cars are super horses in terms of hauling by comparing how fast they can move legs in a certain order. AlphaZero does not just play one game, it can play many, quite possibly at the same time.
- dorkwood 5y ago
  To me, a system that was 50% towards AGI would demonstrate thinking and logic similar to the way we experience it in dreams.

analog31 5y ago

I think there needs to be a term for things that are in-between possible and impossible. This occurred to me in discussions about faster-than-light travel. Surely there are things that are strictly possible, like, anything that's already happening. Motorboats are strictly possible. Maybe some things are strictly impossible, like, squaring the circle. There may be some things that are impossible but that we will never know. In between these two realms are ideas that can be suggested without evidence but yet taken quite seriously. Many of these things require overturning bodies of knowledge that are presently considered to be pretty robust, or developing entirely new ways of thinking. Some are contradictory to other things residing at the same level of possibility. Terms such as "magic" are divisive and don't seem to capture the essence. The next question is whether an in-between level of possibility serves any useful purpose, and if it's distinguishable as a unique condition. Or, as a practical matter, whether it can be lumped in with things that are strictly impossible. How does my life change if the things that can be suggested without evidence deserve a category different than strict impossibility?

heckerhut 5y ago
I think you’re on to something. You should explore that in an essay.

eximius 5y ago

AGI is orders of magnitude more complex than the toys we're playing with in machine learning today. It's like building a factory and then expecting factories that build themselves to be right around the corner. They're just such different beasts and so far away from each other.