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It will definitely happen, and likely (>50%) within the next 10-15 years. We need true GAI to do this, of course, and the question is: will a "real" GAI be wil

It will definitely happen, and likely (>50%) within the next 10-15 years. We need true GAI to do this, of course, and the question is: will a "real" GAI be willing to drive a car? How much will we have to pay it?

runarberg 4y ago
GAI is a pipe dream. There is no technology that we can even conceive—let alone build in the next 10-15 years—of which passes as GAI. Our current AI is based on statistical inference, GAI will need to be able to do far more than infer from data and interpolate actions. No we will never have GAI. --- I know never is a long time, but I can comfortably predict this because there is not only technological problems with GAI, but also philosophical problems. The way we define intelligence is such that if we find or invent something that combats human intelligence we immediately redefine it to exclude that aspect.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  The question of if an AI can be regarded as a sentient being has already been debated ad nauseam in science fiction (e.g. Data in Star Trek). All that's needed is someone to achieve GAI at a supercomputer level. From then on, it's just a matter of scaling it down. Your iPhone has more compute power than a supercomputer 30 years ago, after all. And what's also a way to "cheat" is fusing computers and organic matter. Brain-in-a-vat style, or, for yet another Star Trek reference, Voyager's organic compute network (which IIRC even suffered a pathogen infection at one point). And that is definitely possible in the next 10-15 years. Give Musk's Neuralink enough apes to euthanize and it will get done.
  - chongli 4y ago
    Your iPhone has more compute power than a supercomputer 30 years ago, after all. In 30 years we will not have an iPhone-sized device with the power of today's supercomputers. Transistor scaling is in its final stages. We'll be lucky to get 2-3 more process nodes and that'll be it.
    - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
      This assumes we don't use anything but transistor scaling for the next 30 years in mobile computing.
      - runarberg 4y ago
        Even if we find a novel semiconductor that can scale 1000x better then silicon transistors (say DNA semiconductors), then we are still limited by classical computing. Meaning our most intelligent systems are still just good old statistical inference (I say still, but statistical inference is really powerful, and getting 1000s of orders of magnitude better at statistical inference means a world of amazing discoveries). Perhaps quantum computing will enable new kinds of inference, then we will need to scale superconductors like we did transistors in the past 75 years, that is possible (not in the next 10-15 years though; 30-40 years is more realistic). However I don’t think this will lead to anything more then amazing statistical inference. People theorized artificial neural networks way back in the 1940s and we already had algorithms for it in the 1970s. I’m not aware of any algorithms, not even theoretical ones that gives us AGI, on any computing device (not even quantum computers).
  - runarberg 4y ago
    GAI is not limited by computing power, but theory. Yes we will be able to make better inference by feeding more data into our models, supervised learning will be able to work with thousands of parameters, etc. This will lead to all sorts of new discoveries in many fields, including biochemistry, astrophysics, neurology, etc. It will also bring us a bunch of new fun toys to play with including better and more capable robots, and it will also lead to better engineered social systems (including traffic engineering; but also public transit, and—yes—self driving vehicles—but we already have self driving trains, so it is not as big of a deal as you think it is). However this misses my point about AGI. It is not about computing capabilities but theory. AGI will have to evaluate situations that has never arisen before without having data that directly directs it. I don’t see how statistical inference can do that, and as such we will need an entirely new methods of training it. Like I said, we haven’t even conceived how an AGI technology works, there are no algorithms which will work in theory even with unlimited computing power. Contrast this, for example, with quantum computing, which has a bunch of algorithms demonstrating it’s capabilities. With AGI all we have is “perhaps our cars become better at driving them selves”. I’m not buying it.
- fasterik 4y ago
  I'm trying to understand the worldview that leads to what you believe. As far as I can tell, you're assuming there is a supernatural aspect to the human mind. According to my worldview, humans are just robots built out of DNA, proteins, etc. The idea that machines couldn't do everything a human can do (and more) doesn't make any sense to me.
  - runarberg 4y ago
    I’m sorry but I don’t have that world view. I must not have been clear enough (english is not my first language; and I’m not even super clear in my native language). I actually don’t believe in the superiority of the human mind, I think the word intelligence is actually a scientific distraction. Humans are remarkably—but not uniquely—adapted at communicating with each others and manipulating our environment for our benefit (most of the time; but sometimes to our determent, e.g. by causing a climate disaster). My statement about intelligence was not to share my believe about humanity, but a statement about human believes about our humanity (a theory of mind of sorts). I believe that humans are so human centric that we will always evaluate intelligence in human terms. As such nothing will ever supersede it as we will simply alter our former believes in order to keep our mind at the center of the universe. Now as for machines that can do everything that humans can do (and more), I still consider this a pipe dream, even if we disregard the word intelligence. This is not because I believe the human mind is superior to machine, it is more because we haven’t conceived of how we would do this. Statistical inference has its limits, even with all the computing power in the world, it will never do what specialized machines like our brains have evolved over millions of years to do (well maybe if we allow our machines to freely evolve and procreate and set them loose in a dynamic self sustaining environment; but that wont provide any benefits for us). I also have my doubts about the utility of AGI. People state that full self driving cars is easier with AGI, but I haven’t seen any proof of this statement (nor for the utility of AGI driven cars for that matter; we’ve had self driving trains for decades without AGI). With traditional machine learning models, there is tons of utility in the data analysis in all sorts of fields (just like there was with factor analysis and linear regression before it), but with AGI I fail to see what we will get from a vague notion of can do everything humans can do, which doesn’t apply to traditional machines that are specifically programmed for that task. In short, I don’t even think there is a market for AGI.
- jalk 4y ago
  > the way we define intelligence is such that if we find or invent something that combats human intelligence we immediately redefine it to exclude that aspect. And what makes you so sure the opposite won't happen? E.g. GAI will be achieved earlier by excluding some aspect of human intelligence that some people deem essential. The whole "problem" is that we can't agree on what constitutes intelligence. I predict that it won't be long before AI systems can score 200 on standard IQ tests.
  - alasdair_ 4y ago
    >I predict that it won't be long before AI systems can score 200 on standard IQ tests. I don't know of a "standard" iq test that goes past 160 or so.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
tempestn 4y ago
I think your "of course" is glossing over too much. It is very, very far from a given to me that GAI is required in order to solve self-driving cars well. I think it's reasonably possible we'll have good self-driving cars within 15 years (50% sounds about right to me for the longer end of that time horizon), but I highly, highly doubt we'll have GAI in anywhere close to that timeframe.
steveBK123 4y ago
Have you tried any of the state-of-the-art out there? ChatGPT is easily circumvented to violate all its own guardrails with a few instructions. Knowledge without understanding. It clearly doesn't understand it's own rules well enough to realize when it is asked to violate the rule "don't do C" that being asked to do A->B->C is the same as being asked to do C.

runarberg 4y ago

GAI is a pipe dream. There is no technology that we can even conceive—let alone build in the next 10-15 years—of which passes as GAI. Our current AI is based on statistical inference, GAI will need to be able to do far more than infer from data and interpolate actions. No we will never have GAI. --- I know never is a long time, but I can comfortably predict this because there is not only technological problems with GAI, but also philosophical problems. The way we define intelligence is such that if we find or invent something that combats human intelligence we immediately redefine it to exclude that aspect.

mschuster91 4y ago
The question of if an AI can be regarded as a sentient being has already been debated ad nauseam in science fiction (e.g. Data in Star Trek). All that's needed is someone to achieve GAI at a supercomputer level. From then on, it's just a matter of scaling it down. Your iPhone has more compute power than a supercomputer 30 years ago, after all. And what's also a way to "cheat" is fusing computers and organic matter. Brain-in-a-vat style, or, for yet another Star Trek reference, Voyager's organic compute network (which IIRC even suffered a pathogen infection at one point). And that is definitely possible in the next 10-15 years. Give Musk's Neuralink enough apes to euthanize and it will get done.
- chongli 4y ago
  Your iPhone has more compute power than a supercomputer 30 years ago, after all. In 30 years we will not have an iPhone-sized device with the power of today's supercomputers. Transistor scaling is in its final stages. We'll be lucky to get 2-3 more process nodes and that'll be it.
  - ElectricalUnion 4y ago
    This assumes we don't use anything but transistor scaling for the next 30 years in mobile computing.
    - runarberg 4y ago
      Even if we find a novel semiconductor that can scale 1000x better then silicon transistors (say DNA semiconductors), then we are still limited by classical computing. Meaning our most intelligent systems are still just good old statistical inference (I say still, but statistical inference is really powerful, and getting 1000s of orders of magnitude better at statistical inference means a world of amazing discoveries). Perhaps quantum computing will enable new kinds of inference, then we will need to scale superconductors like we did transistors in the past 75 years, that is possible (not in the next 10-15 years though; 30-40 years is more realistic). However I don’t think this will lead to anything more then amazing statistical inference. People theorized artificial neural networks way back in the 1940s and we already had algorithms for it in the 1970s. I’m not aware of any algorithms, not even theoretical ones that gives us AGI, on any computing device (not even quantum computers).
- runarberg 4y ago
  GAI is not limited by computing power, but theory. Yes we will be able to make better inference by feeding more data into our models, supervised learning will be able to work with thousands of parameters, etc. This will lead to all sorts of new discoveries in many fields, including biochemistry, astrophysics, neurology, etc. It will also bring us a bunch of new fun toys to play with including better and more capable robots, and it will also lead to better engineered social systems (including traffic engineering; but also public transit, and—yes—self driving vehicles—but we already have self driving trains, so it is not as big of a deal as you think it is). However this misses my point about AGI. It is not about computing capabilities but theory. AGI will have to evaluate situations that has never arisen before without having data that directly directs it. I don’t see how statistical inference can do that, and as such we will need an entirely new methods of training it. Like I said, we haven’t even conceived how an AGI technology works, there are no algorithms which will work in theory even with unlimited computing power. Contrast this, for example, with quantum computing, which has a bunch of algorithms demonstrating it’s capabilities. With AGI all we have is “perhaps our cars become better at driving them selves”. I’m not buying it.
fasterik 4y ago
I'm trying to understand the worldview that leads to what you believe. As far as I can tell, you're assuming there is a supernatural aspect to the human mind. According to my worldview, humans are just robots built out of DNA, proteins, etc. The idea that machines couldn't do everything a human can do (and more) doesn't make any sense to me.
- runarberg 4y ago
  I’m sorry but I don’t have that world view. I must not have been clear enough (english is not my first language; and I’m not even super clear in my native language). I actually don’t believe in the superiority of the human mind, I think the word intelligence is actually a scientific distraction. Humans are remarkably—but not uniquely—adapted at communicating with each others and manipulating our environment for our benefit (most of the time; but sometimes to our determent, e.g. by causing a climate disaster). My statement about intelligence was not to share my believe about humanity, but a statement about human believes about our humanity (a theory of mind of sorts). I believe that humans are so human centric that we will always evaluate intelligence in human terms. As such nothing will ever supersede it as we will simply alter our former believes in order to keep our mind at the center of the universe. Now as for machines that can do everything that humans can do (and more), I still consider this a pipe dream, even if we disregard the word intelligence. This is not because I believe the human mind is superior to machine, it is more because we haven’t conceived of how we would do this. Statistical inference has its limits, even with all the computing power in the world, it will never do what specialized machines like our brains have evolved over millions of years to do (well maybe if we allow our machines to freely evolve and procreate and set them loose in a dynamic self sustaining environment; but that wont provide any benefits for us). I also have my doubts about the utility of AGI. People state that full self driving cars is easier with AGI, but I haven’t seen any proof of this statement (nor for the utility of AGI driven cars for that matter; we’ve had self driving trains for decades without AGI). With traditional machine learning models, there is tons of utility in the data analysis in all sorts of fields (just like there was with factor analysis and linear regression before it), but with AGI I fail to see what we will get from a vague notion of can do everything humans can do, which doesn’t apply to traditional machines that are specifically programmed for that task. In short, I don’t even think there is a market for AGI.
jalk 4y ago
> the way we define intelligence is such that if we find or invent something that combats human intelligence we immediately redefine it to exclude that aspect. And what makes you so sure the opposite won't happen? E.g. GAI will be achieved earlier by excluding some aspect of human intelligence that some people deem essential. The whole "problem" is that we can't agree on what constitutes intelligence. I predict that it won't be long before AI systems can score 200 on standard IQ tests.
- alasdair_ 4y ago
  >I predict that it won't be long before AI systems can score 200 on standard IQ tests. I don't know of a "standard" iq test that goes past 160 or so.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]

tempestn 4y ago

I think your "of course" is glossing over too much. It is very, very far from a given to me that GAI is required in order to solve self-driving cars well. I think it's reasonably possible we'll have good self-driving cars within 15 years (50% sounds about right to me for the longer end of that time horizon), but I highly, highly doubt we'll have GAI in anywhere close to that timeframe.

steveBK123 4y ago

Have you tried any of the state-of-the-art out there? ChatGPT is easily circumvented to violate all its own guardrails with a few instructions. Knowledge without understanding. It clearly doesn't understand it's own rules well enough to realize when it is asked to violate the rule "don't do C" that being asked to do A->B->C is the same as being asked to do C.