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I still don't believe deep learning is going to take us to AGI. The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs shows that it's a kind

I still don't believe deep learning is going to take us to AGI. The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs shows that it's a kind of massive memorization going on here, rather than true understanding. Has anyone tried searching for new basic operations, below the level of neural networks? We've been using these methods for years, and I doubt the first major breakthrough in ML is the most optimal method possible. Consider the extreme case of searching over all mathematical operations to see if something really novel can be discovered. How feasible would this be?

zarzavat 5y ago
> The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs shows that it's a kind of massive memorization going on here, rather than true understanding. Isn’t that a truism? “Understanding” is equivalent to AGI. Nobody would argue that we have AGI yet, but the intelligence-sans-understanding is somewhat similar to animal intelligence, which was the precursor to human intelligence. What should scare us is that we know that animal to human was not a difficult step evolutionarily.
- stephc_int13 5y ago
  >What should scare us is that we know that animal to human was not a difficult step evolutionarily. Do we know that? If that is not difficult, why is it so rare?
  - CTmystery 5y ago
    Perhaps most of us in this forum have only the most basic exposure to biology? I say this because with any serious exposure you can't help but be dumbfounded by the complexity and "creativity" of nature. Everything is amazing! The fact that the pieces fit together is just wild and scary and awesome. To think that gradient descent and backprop will give us general intelligence, one of the great mysteries of nature, is incredibly hubristic, IMO. It's statistical inference at scale, with some heuristics up/downstream. It's a cool and useful tool for sure!
ahelwer 5y ago
Sometimes I think peoples’ self-awareness (internal world, whatever you want to call it) makes them think they’re smarter or more competent than they are. My partner has a better memory than me and she will continually point out cases where I make the exact same comment when responding to similar situations across time (driving past a mural on the road, walking past the same flower bed, etc.) I really do feel like a program responding to stimuli sometimes. And sure I have a rich internal world or whatever, but that isn’t so easy to discern from my external behavior. I think as I grow older the magic dissipates a bit and I can see how really, humans aren’t that unique and incredible. What’s incredible is that all this random faffing around at scale without much individual brilliance leads to the wonders of society. But we could divine that by looking at a termite mound. All of which is to say that memorization as you describe it seems like a plausible path to AGI, and humans don’t deal with weird inputs well either. It’s not like we are trying to make the ultimate single intelligence that rules humanity (although that may eventually come to pass). But something of roughly human competence certainly seems achievable.
soraki_soladead 5y ago
I think it depends on what’s meant by “deep learning”. If you mean the latest multi-billion parameter transformer architecture trained on narrow domain data then yeah, you’re probably right. If you mean large networks of simple computational units optimized by gradient descent on parallel hardware, why not?
ColinWright 5y ago
> The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs ... If you believe that people are "general intelligence" systems, then your comment doesn't imply that the existing artificial systems won't achieve general intelligence, because people fail massively on weird inputs. Consider optical illusions: https://newatlas.com/science/best-optical-illusions-year-2021-contest-winner/ https://newatlas.com/science/best-optical-illusions-year-202... Consider audio illusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKR2pGwavqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKR2pGwavqE Consider tactile illusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdhnEq76_PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdhnEq76_PA * Machines fail on weird inputs, therefore they will never be intelligent; * People fail on weird inputs, therefore they cannot be intelligent.

zarzavat 5y ago

> The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs shows that it's a kind of massive memorization going on here, rather than true understanding. Isn’t that a truism? “Understanding” is equivalent to AGI. Nobody would argue that we have AGI yet, but the intelligence-sans-understanding is somewhat similar to animal intelligence, which was the precursor to human intelligence. What should scare us is that we know that animal to human was not a difficult step evolutionarily.

stephc_int13 5y ago
>What should scare us is that we know that animal to human was not a difficult step evolutionarily. Do we know that? If that is not difficult, why is it so rare?
- CTmystery 5y ago
  Perhaps most of us in this forum have only the most basic exposure to biology? I say this because with any serious exposure you can't help but be dumbfounded by the complexity and "creativity" of nature. Everything is amazing! The fact that the pieces fit together is just wild and scary and awesome. To think that gradient descent and backprop will give us general intelligence, one of the great mysteries of nature, is incredibly hubristic, IMO. It's statistical inference at scale, with some heuristics up/downstream. It's a cool and useful tool for sure!

ahelwer 5y ago

Sometimes I think peoples’ self-awareness (internal world, whatever you want to call it) makes them think they’re smarter or more competent than they are. My partner has a better memory than me and she will continually point out cases where I make the exact same comment when responding to similar situations across time (driving past a mural on the road, walking past the same flower bed, etc.) I really do feel like a program responding to stimuli sometimes. And sure I have a rich internal world or whatever, but that isn’t so easy to discern from my external behavior. I think as I grow older the magic dissipates a bit and I can see how really, humans aren’t that unique and incredible. What’s incredible is that all this random faffing around at scale without much individual brilliance leads to the wonders of society. But we could divine that by looking at a termite mound. All of which is to say that memorization as you describe it seems like a plausible path to AGI, and humans don’t deal with weird inputs well either. It’s not like we are trying to make the ultimate single intelligence that rules humanity (although that may eventually come to pass). But something of roughly human competence certainly seems achievable.

soraki_soladead 5y ago

I think it depends on what’s meant by “deep learning”. If you mean the latest multi-billion parameter transformer architecture trained on narrow domain data then yeah, you’re probably right. If you mean large networks of simple computational units optimized by gradient descent on parallel hardware, why not?

ColinWright 5y ago

> The susceptibility of these systems to completely failing on weird inputs ... If you believe that people are "general intelligence" systems, then your comment doesn't imply that the existing artificial systems won't achieve general intelligence, because people fail massively on weird inputs. Consider optical illusions: https://newatlas.com/science/best-optical-illusions-year-2021-contest-winner/ https://newatlas.com/science/best-optical-illusions-year-202... Consider audio illusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKR2pGwavqE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKR2pGwavqE Consider tactile illusions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdhnEq76_PA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WdhnEq76_PA * Machines fail on weird inputs, therefore they will never be intelligent; * People fail on weird inputs, therefore they cannot be intelligent.