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Hi! Author here. I think you raise some great points! I'll address them each: -- I am a professional AI practitioner. I work in the field of medical deep learn

by mkaic 5y ago

Hi! Author here. I think you raise some great points! I'll address them each: -- I am a professional AI practitioner. I work in the field of medical deep learning and love the field. I am strongly considering starting a few experimental forays into some of the concepts I mentioned in my post as side projects, especially self-modifying model architectures. -- Yes, you're totally right! I am making the fundamental assumption that it is possible. My reasoning is based on my belief that human behavior is simply a function of the many sensory and environmental inputs we experience. Since neural networks can approximate any function, I believe they can approximate general human behavior. -- This is fair. The topic of the singularity is often used for traffic/fame (I mean, I'm guilty of this myself with this very post, though I hope I still managed to spark some productive discourse) and so there are always conflicts of interest to take into account. I can't name any examples off the top of my head that perfectly fit your criteria, but depending on how much you trust him, Elon Musk seems to be genuinely concerned about the potential for a malevolent singularity. Thank you so much for your comment! I really appreciate your feedback. Have a wonderful day.

jonny_eh 5y ago
^ To be clear, mkaic is the original author of the article.
- mkaic 5y ago
  Oh, whoops, I'll edit the comment to make it more clear. Thanks for reminding me.
soVeryTired 5y ago
Cubic splines can approximate any function too, so the universality argument is a little weak IMO. Even if one buys into the idea that human behaviour is a 'function' of sensory and environmental 'inputs', that's a long way from showing a neural net a million different texts and asking it to generalise.
- mkaic 5y ago
  I think the first AGI to pass a Turing test will probably be a simple language model. I don't think it will look like any of the GPTs, but I think text completion is a great starting point. I'm not sure how other inputs will be added into the mix, but I am sure that they will be -- heck, maybe once we train a general language model, it may very well just tell us how to incorporate things like video, audio, haptics, gyro data, etc into its architecture.
gizajob 5y ago
How can one turn the sinking, horrified feeling when one loses a love into a function? Or describe in terms of a function, the blissful wonder of being in the arms of a lover? An issue I have is the that there seem to be profound limitations to language, explored in the philosophy of language, that fail to capture much, if not most, of the world. Functionalist models of mind and behaviour seem extremely limited, as our subjective ontology doesn't seem to reduce to functional outputs. You also say that an AI would rapidly consume the whole of human knowledge. For me, the totality of human knowledge would become a mass of contradictory statements, with little to choose between them on a linguistic level. There are, for me, profound philosophical issues with creating a mind that is "conscious" in the sense that an AGI is implied to be, as a purely symbolic logical construction. Language is the only tool we have for programming a mind, and yet the mind cannot be completely described in language, nor can language seem to properly encompass whatever the fundamental ontology of reality involves. I don't feel there will be a "free lunch" where we advance computer science to the point where we get an explosion of the kind AI1 designs a better AI2, which designs an even better AI3, and so on. This seems to have a perpetual motion feeling to it, rather than one of evolution. It isn't to say AGI is impossible, but I believe that like everything else in computer science it will have to be solved pragmatically, and realising this could be an extremely long way off.
- Sweetness 5y ago
  > How can one turn the sinking, horrified feeling when one loses a love into a function?" The same way the brain does. Those complex feelings can eventually be resolved into dumb neurophysics. Love, fear, anxiety etc. al are just electrical impulses tickling chemicals. Is there anything in our brains that we could never approximate with technology?
  - mkaic 5y ago
    This is my view as well. It's a little unnerving and it definitely starts to overlap with the whole "free will" debate, but yeah, I don't see any reason why we can't fundamentally replicate the behaviors exhibited by the brain. It doesn't violate any laws of physics.
  - 5y ago

by mkaic 5y ago

jonny_eh 5y ago

^ To be clear, mkaic is the original author of the article.

mkaic 5y ago
Oh, whoops, I'll edit the comment to make it more clear. Thanks for reminding me.

soVeryTired 5y ago

Cubic splines can approximate any function too, so the universality argument is a little weak IMO. Even if one buys into the idea that human behaviour is a 'function' of sensory and environmental 'inputs', that's a long way from showing a neural net a million different texts and asking it to generalise.

mkaic 5y ago
I think the first AGI to pass a Turing test will probably be a simple language model. I don't think it will look like any of the GPTs, but I think text completion is a great starting point. I'm not sure how other inputs will be added into the mix, but I am sure that they will be -- heck, maybe once we train a general language model, it may very well just tell us how to incorporate things like video, audio, haptics, gyro data, etc into its architecture.

gizajob 5y ago

How can one turn the sinking, horrified feeling when one loses a love into a function? Or describe in terms of a function, the blissful wonder of being in the arms of a lover? An issue I have is the that there seem to be profound limitations to language, explored in the philosophy of language, that fail to capture much, if not most, of the world. Functionalist models of mind and behaviour seem extremely limited, as our subjective ontology doesn't seem to reduce to functional outputs. You also say that an AI would rapidly consume the whole of human knowledge. For me, the totality of human knowledge would become a mass of contradictory statements, with little to choose between them on a linguistic level. There are, for me, profound philosophical issues with creating a mind that is "conscious" in the sense that an AGI is implied to be, as a purely symbolic logical construction. Language is the only tool we have for programming a mind, and yet the mind cannot be completely described in language, nor can language seem to properly encompass whatever the fundamental ontology of reality involves. I don't feel there will be a "free lunch" where we advance computer science to the point where we get an explosion of the kind AI1 designs a better AI2, which designs an even better AI3, and so on. This seems to have a perpetual motion feeling to it, rather than one of evolution. It isn't to say AGI is impossible, but I believe that like everything else in computer science it will have to be solved pragmatically, and realising this could be an extremely long way off.

Sweetness 5y ago
> How can one turn the sinking, horrified feeling when one loses a love into a function?" The same way the brain does. Those complex feelings can eventually be resolved into dumb neurophysics. Love, fear, anxiety etc. al are just electrical impulses tickling chemicals. Is there anything in our brains that we could never approximate with technology?
- mkaic 5y ago
  This is my view as well. It's a little unnerving and it definitely starts to overlap with the whole "free will" debate, but yeah, I don't see any reason why we can't fundamentally replicate the behaviors exhibited by the brain. It doesn't violate any laws of physics.
- 5y ago