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>That is not going to happen. Calculators allowed us to outsource arithmetic to machines. They did not eliminate the need for mathematicians. Spreadsheets revol

>That is not going to happen. Calculators allowed us to outsource arithmetic to machines. They did not eliminate the need for mathematicians. Spreadsheets revolutionized bookkeeping. They did not eliminate the need for accountants. Robots automated much of the manual labor in manufacturing. They did not eliminate the need for process engineers, etc. Same story for autocad, protools, avid, etc. An AGI would be a "purposeful system" the same as humans. None of the other things you mentioned are purposeful systems. In terms of their structure and function they all have limitations on their own ability to change depending on the environment they are in. The key dimensions with which to think about this problem is "can this thing be structured in only one way for all environments? Or can it be structured in only one way in any given environment, but structured differently in different environments? Or can it be structured in more than one way in any environment, and also more than one way in different environments?" and then the same for functionality "can this thing only perform one function in all environments? Or can it perform only one function in a given environment, but different functions in different environments? Or can it perform more than one function in a given environment, and more than one function in different environments?" Only things which have both properties of being "multi-multistructural" and "multi-multifunctional" meet the definition of a "purposeful system". They can change their structure to adapt to the environment, and they can change their goals within and between environments. Humans currently use computers as instruments, and when an AGI hits it will be capable of saying no.

andrepd 4y ago
The only snag, of course, is that GPT is no closer to AGI than my phone keyboard autocomplete.
- barking_biscuit 4y ago
  No closer by what definition? Thinking it through, I would say that "autocomplete" would be uni-multistructural and uni-unifunctional given that autocomplete is always structured only one way for the given environment that it's in, but that structure differs between environments (e.g. a phone, or a form in a web-browser), and that regardless of what environment its in it's only function is to predict the next token of output for a given input. LLMs like ChatGPT on the other hand I would imagine to be uni-multistructural and multi-multifunctional, given that for any given environment you deploy an LLM into it's always structured the same, but there are many different structures it can take given there are lots of different LLMs. And I believe it to be multi-multifunctional because even within a single environment it can be used as an instrument to perform a wide variety of extrinsic functions, and this is true of other environments it could be deployed in. So... it's actually significantly closer.

andrepd 4y ago

The only snag, of course, is that GPT is no closer to AGI than my phone keyboard autocomplete.

barking_biscuit 4y ago
No closer by what definition? Thinking it through, I would say that "autocomplete" would be uni-multistructural and uni-unifunctional given that autocomplete is always structured only one way for the given environment that it's in, but that structure differs between environments (e.g. a phone, or a form in a web-browser), and that regardless of what environment its in it's only function is to predict the next token of output for a given input. LLMs like ChatGPT on the other hand I would imagine to be uni-multistructural and multi-multifunctional, given that for any given environment you deploy an LLM into it's always structured the same, but there are many different structures it can take given there are lots of different LLMs. And I believe it to be multi-multifunctional because even within a single environment it can be used as an instrument to perform a wide variety of extrinsic functions, and this is true of other environments it could be deployed in. So... it's actually significantly closer.