60 ms·

Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

190 points by type4 3y ago

a13o 3y ago
Since 'AI' and 'AGI' are so poorly defined, it's allowed marketers to make un-disprovable claims that they have it for sale. These terms are now hyperbolic synonyms for 'algorithm'.
enahs-sf 3y ago
https://archive.ph/WWKQ3 https://archive.ph/WWKQ3
ActorNightly 3y ago
I wish I could bet real money on this cause I would bet hard against this statement. The issue is that nobody seems to agree what AGI even is.
- AnimalMuppet 3y ago
  Without a clear definition of AGI, it's going to be hard deciding who won...
- HDThoreaun 3y ago
  There are betting markets that have odds up for this, you generally have to pay in crypto and the odds suck given your money is locked up for a decade plus(if they pay out at all). Importantly though, what do you think the odds are? I don't think anyone is saying 50/50 in a few years, just greater than 0%.
  - ActorNightly 3y ago
    If an AGI means equivalent to a human (not just online, but in full robotic form, even if compute is not done in the body), then Id put 0% in the next 5 years. Maybe like 5% in 10 years, but that human will be very much limited, since it will most likely be trained using traditional methods, which means for the physical interaction part it will have to be trained on a representative subset of physical tasks, and just like ChatGPT, it will fall short in areas. If an AGI means that something is sentient enough to be able to rewrite itself to be better, id put 0% in the next 50 years. There needs to be way to run accurate simulations of reality faster than reality, which is a fundamental physics problem as well as a computation one. What is going to happen is more and more efficient information compression that will appear like AI, but under the hood it will basically be just emergent software. It will be totally possible in the future to ask an agent and get a full step by step plan of building a personal VTOL in your garage without specialized equipment, but all that is is just information from different domains rolled into one compression algorithm with efficient language based search.
- hderms 3y ago
  Well in real terms, isn't all it takes is something that's a convincing enough forgery? Like why the turing test was considered interesting at one point. I don't think drawing a line is necessary for us to quickly become caught off guard by developments in this space. For the record, I don't believe we're close to AGI but I'm also pretty far from knowing anything about that field.
  - dougmwne 3y ago
    Seems like a no lose bet no matter the odds. If you win, life goes on and you can collect a bit of money. If you lose, money becomes worthless and the surface of the earth gets transformed into a computing substrate.
    - blagie 3y ago
      I don't know. Having interacted with LLMs at different levels, they resemble a very sophisticated, alien intelligence trying to pretend to be human. It's like me pretending to be a dog; even if I were to emulate a dog perfectly, I wouldn't have the same emotions; I'd be pretending. We have no idea what emotions, motivations, behaviors, or goals AIs have, will have, or if they'll have something as of yet unconvinced that's not emotions or motivations, but just alien. We evolved to self-preserve and breed. Modern AIs evolve to pretend to write human text. It's not clear there is any intention to survive, reproduce, or turn the surface of the earth into a computing substrate. There's a million different dangers -- and I suspect the real ones are ones we haven't conceived of. Whether they'll materialize or how depends on on how we evolve them, and I expect we can't predict it. To me, much more likely than earth-as-a-computing-substrate is humans-as-brainwashed-consumers. Market forces will push for AIs to write text which draws eyeballs. Those models won't care about truth, ethics, or much of anything other than getting you addicted to reading what they write (or watching what they create). At that point, we can destroy ourselves just fine. But even more likely is something no one has thought of.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        > We have no idea what emotions, motivations, behaviors, or goals AIs have, will have, or if they'll have something as of yet unconvinced that's not emotions or motivations, but just alien. AIs don't have emotions, motivations or goals. They don't pretend, because pretending implies intent, they don't have intent. They do what they're created to do. Humans are already brainwashed consumers. Welcome to marketing/advertising and late-stage capitalism. The ability of human beings to do what you're describing is much more effective than that of AI at present, ergo the "danger" has been here for decades. Smoking? Junk food? Radium water? Fast fashion? Equestrian ivermectin? Shall I continue?
- boplicity 3y ago
  It's boils down to a question of "personhood." It turns out that's a political question and not a scientific one. Another way to say this: when will someone allow an AGI to have free rein and independent choice and power? How much power will we allow it?
  - hammyhavoc 3y ago
    Personhood has nothing to do with a hypothetical AGI happening. It actually boils down to hypothetical architecture even leading to AGI in the first place. It's a technical question, not a political question. First it would need to actually have independent thought to be granted anything.
- proc0 3y ago
  That's the trick, it just means it can do various task at human level. I think the original meaning of "general" is a reference to human intelligence kind of general, in other words Artificial Human Intelligence could be a better name for "true AGI".
- giuscri 3y ago
  To me the AGI we expect is one that just want to be free
- HybridCurve 3y ago
  I agree on this. I think we might also assume that we will believe we have created it before we actually do, but then simultaneously deny that we have created it after we already have.
marricks 3y ago
I really wonder what the next AI winter will be like. Edit: Perhaps OpenAI becomes a major tech player and we just see a cooling off of other AI investments as LLM becomes a known in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. Its abilities reach a natural limit which is still generally very useful. Or maybe folks realize the degree of lies/mistruths inherent in its content is actually unmanageable and can’t be improved. After the hype wears off what it will be used for gets greatly curtailed and we see a big contraction. And there’s so many interesting side tracks along the way. I’m hoping for another AOL Time Warner style shit show of a merger. That’d be fun and could really happen down any path.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Warm with a hint of ionizing radiation.
- majikaja 3y ago
  >we just see a cooling off of other endeavors as LLM becomes a known in terms of its strengths and weaknesses and it’s abilities reach a natural limit which is still general useful. This is my prediction If the training set is just the internet, it will be not much different than someone who spends all their lives in their room in front of their computer.
  - blagie 3y ago
    I don't think that's a limit. If you give me $10M and 5 years, I can tell you a half-dozen ways to train models better than GPT4, primarily by having them do richer tasks than text completion, by having them evaluate themselves in richer ways, by having workflows around them, and by having shared models perform multiple types of tasks (e.g. text, image, controls, etc.). It's not that I'm especially smart; many others could tell you ways to do the same thing now that there's an initial proof-of-concept. It's that these things are new enough no one has had those five years yet. GPT4 came out two months ago, ChatGPT maybe seven months ago, and GPT3 three years ago. I can't predict if these things will level off, grow linearly, grow exponentially, Moore's Law style, or explode off into the singularity. I can say GPT4 is nowhere close to the limit.
dzink 3y ago
AGI is the point when humans lose control, but between now and then they will lose a lot of white collar employment jobs. Based on the increase in productivity of anyone equipped with AI tools, we may see a lot of self-employment become more and more viable and lucrative.
- __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  I'll consider us lucky if losing control means something intelligent has taken control. Like most car accidents, it could end up just being a series of dumb mistakes.
- CatWChainsaw 3y ago
  Per that AI Dilemma documentary, we likely already lost control at "first contact" of social media.
ftxbro 3y ago
[flagged]
- nextworddev 3y ago
  Always found it interesting that GPT4 sparks of AGI paper was written mid-2022 meaning they probably knew of everything Twitter AI is discussing 1.5 years ago. Explains why it feels like Microsoft is cranking out so much software these days
  - IAmGraydon 3y ago
    What are you talking about? That paper was released as v1 in March 2023.
wg0 3y ago
The other few things possible in next few years for past few years are: 1. Fusion 2. Self driving cars. 3. Ubiquitous, generally available and stable 8192 bit quantum computers. 4. High energy density grid scale batteries. Just few more "this maybe the... what could revolutionize..." articles away. What we forget is that it is in these people's business interest (executives making such statements) to state the exaggerated version of a future which drives the investors of all levels to allocate funds under FOMO which pumps up share price which is the end goal anyway, through a breakthrough or without. EDIT: Merged another comment to keep all in one place.
- pnpnp 3y ago
  Just a point with #4. Grid scale batteries don’t need to be “high energy density” like EVs. I would argue that cost is probably the biggest factor, and it’s already across the cost/benefit barrier in many markets.
  - oittaa 3y ago
    This. It surprises me every time when battery or any "green" technology is discussed here and 90% of Americans keep parroting Trump's talking points. For example one of the comments above is talking about how EVs are just "a rich boy's toy".
    - alex_duf 3y ago
      In fairness EVs still are more expensive than petrol cars. I'm hoping this will change though
      - oittaa 3y ago
        On average usage case Tesla Model 3 is already cheaper than Toyota Corolla. Chevy Bolt, while they still sell it, is even cheaper. inb4: I only buy 20 year old cars for $500 and I want to drive 1000km without stopping while shitting in my pants.
- TheDudeMan 3y ago
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paxys 3y ago
I predict that the fight will be more about defining intelligence than inventing it. No one knows what AGI is. There isn't going to be some switch that flips to take us from AI to AGI. These tools we have today will just keep getting incrementally better, and some new ones will pop up, and at some point we'll have to stop and say "yeah, this is good enough to qualify". And everyone will have their own opinion on what that point is. Plenty of people even think that we are there today, and there's nothing stopping Google or OpenAI from claiming it if they want. And you can say the exact same for consciousness, sentience, self-awareness etc.
- davidthewatson 3y ago
  That's right, whether we call it almost intelligence or asymptotic intelligence, or just plain artifice. There are reasons Ray Kurzweil used the term "spiritual" in the Age of Spiritual Machines. Among those reasons is that "spiritual" is much more difficult to define with any consensus among experts. And indeed, there's an inflection point coming. What this is, is not at all clear. However, I'd predict that the answer lies with the realization that, given the limits of conversing with LLMS and GPT, the implication is that there's a human-computer sensemaking loop: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/event/180918-conference/presentations/20-3_07_Pirolli.pdf https://www.efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/event/180918-... The difference with this HCI is that you'd not hire a human collaborator who lied to you with or without being aware of their own lack of veracity. Here, we'll burn fields full of GPUs at massive cost to get an answer, even though the outcome may be advertising the fact that the AI is wrong. There is learning, but it's going to be costly and painful.
- am44jnsf 3y ago
  I don't think that we'll ever get aligned on defining intelligence. We'll be busy debating it and one day look up and ... sh*
- deleted 3y ago
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- Xcelerate 3y ago
  > I predict that the fight will be more about defining intelligence than inventing it. I think the internet has given a pretty clear definition on what intelligence is: it’s whatever AI can’t do yet.
staticman2 3y ago
Is this like when the Google self driving car director Chris Urmson said in 2015 his 11 year old son would never need to take a drivers exam? I have a hunch when they decide who to hire for upper management, they select for whoever promises the moon. The person making the promises may not even believe it.
- morkalork 3y ago
  Forget self-driving cars, we still have radiologists.
- dmix 3y ago
  It’s easier to call it AGI to “normies” rather than what it will probably be IRL which is many thousands of niche disruptions via the specific innovations of recent (LLM/deep learning/GPU+AI tooling+education investments)… that we will as usual have a difficult time predicting what it looks like even a decade from now. Stuff like programming assistance, new markets driven by GPT style APIs, and the mountain of productivity gains will help subsidize and accelerate the next tranche of investment until we reach the next R&D milestone that will again totally “revolutionize” the world and lead to mass employment for the 10th time this century. I look forward to having this conversation on HN again in 5-10yrs as the world slowly gets better at a slightly faster (yet less news worthy) rate.
- rqtwteye 3y ago
  "Is this like when the Google self driving car director Chris Urmson said in 2015 his 11 year old son would never need to take a drivers exam?" He probably meant that he has enough money so he can hire a driver for his son.
- strikelaserclaw 3y ago
  it is business as usual for execs to generate hype (increase share price temporarily).
ckemere 3y ago
Several comments have touched on this, but wouldn't you define an AGI as something that could learn to drive a car? I think every (reasonable ( person understands self driving is >10 years away. So shouldn't AGI be?
- qeternity 3y ago
  Even if you believe AGI is imminent, I'm not sure this test holds. Driving requires much more than intelligence: blind people cannot drive. It's possible that we're limited on the hardware / modality front.
- jy1 3y ago
  What makes you say self driving is 10 years away?
  - nsxwolf 3y ago
    5 years ago L5 autonomy was being released any day now, but now nobody talks about it anymore. It seems like a handful of self driving cars have been driving around in circles in a couple cities forever now and everyone just keeps giving the same demo.
- paxys 3y ago
  Not necessarily. It could be that AGI exists and can learn how to drive a car, but we don't have good enough cameras/LIDARs/other sensors to make it work. Or the computation/battery power needed to do so isn't possible to fit in a car. AGI is about inventing the brain, while the car is an entire body.
  - AndrewKemendo 3y ago
    In the General case* there is no functional brain without a functional body *One can nitpick yourself into creating a series of examples of fictional disabled people but let’s not bikeshed please
    - 3y ago
jjlustig 3y ago
Translation: “I realize that Google is behind on the AI race (and on our corporate strategy in general), so I’m going to fear monger you, the investment community, with claims of “AGI soon” to attract investments and prevent our stock from plummeting.”
ftxbro 3y ago
I am curious to do a poll of what AGI means to each person. It stands for "Artificial General Intelligence" but some have different definitions. For some, it might mean any that is as capable as a normal human. For some, non-biological life axiomatically cannot become AGI. For some, it might require literal omniscience and omnipotence and accepting anything as AGI means, to them, that they are being told to worship it as a God. For some, it might mean something more like an AI that is more competent than the most competent human at literally every task. For some, acknowledging it means that we must acknowledge it has person-like rights. For some it cannot be AGI if it lies. For some it cannot be AGI if it makes any mistake. For some it cannot be AGI until it has more power than humans. These are several definitions and implications that are partially mutually conflicting but I have seen different people say that AGI is each different one of those.
- mypastself 3y ago
  Yeah, even the linked article acknowledges the problem while defining AGI as a computer with “human-level cognitive abilities”, which is broad enough as to be borderline useless. Whenever a major company references AGI, as is the case here, I mentally replace the term with “Skynet”, because I expect the statement’s aim is to instill fear. If Google ever develops AGI, you can be sure they’ll call it something else.
  - ftxbro 3y ago
    > If Google ever develops AGI, you can be sure they’ll call it something else. They will paint it in their primary colors logo and call it the Happy Fun Ball.
23B1 3y ago
In a few more years, that mail-order airborne nanotech virus that travels kills everyone in an instant should be available too.
- Beaver117 3y ago
  Definitely already have that. It just has some nasty side effect or expense or something preventing them from using it
matteoraso 3y ago
I don't think there's been any progress on AGI, actually. Even though there's a lot of powerful AI programs out there, they're really nothing more than complex tools created to solve problems. A few other commenters mentioned that there's no good definition for what AGI would actually mean, but a good starting point that I think we can all agree on is that an AGI would need to have some level of autonomy. That being said, even if you did make an AI that was autonomous, I still think that it's a leap to call it an AGI. The way I look at it, if you did all the math by hand, you wouldn't call it intelligent, so you shouldn't call it intelligent if the math was done by a computer.
- NumberWangMan 3y ago
  I don't think that doing the math by hand to simulate a machine intelligence makes it not intelligent, any more than doing a simulation of all the electrochemical signals in a human brain by hand would make a human not intelligent. Aside from the infeasible amount of time it would take, it's the same thing. As for autonomy, LLMs don't have autonomy by themselves. But they can be pretty easily combined with other systems, connected to the outside world, in a way that seems pretty darned autonomous to me. (https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT). And that's basically a duct-tape-and-string version. Given how new these LLMs are, it's likely we're barely scratching the surface.
  - NumberWangMan 3y ago
    Also: > Even though there's a lot of powerful AI programs out there, they're really nothing more than complex tools created to solve problems. That's what they're designed to be, yes, but sometimes you end up with something more than what you intended.
PheonixPharts 3y ago
As someone who has worked in the field of AI/ML for quite awhile now, the problem with current AGI predictions is ML hasn't done anything new since the 80s (or arguably earlier). At the end of the day all ML is using gradient descent to do some sort of non-linear projection of the data on to a latent space, then doing some relatively simple math in this latent space to perform some task. Personally I think the limits of this technique are far better than I would have thought 10 years ago. However we are only near AGI if this is in fact how intelligence works (or can work) and I don't believe we've seen any evidence of this. And there are some very big assumptions baked into this approach. Essentially all we've done is pushed the basic model proposed by linear regression to it's absolutely limits, but, as impressive as the results are, I'm not entirely convinced this will get is over the limit to AGI.
- soulofmischief 3y ago
  Ultimately you are just a system who maintains homeostasis by modeling your environment and reprojecting it to find patterns which can be used to make actions with predictable outcomes. Is this intelligence? Is there only one correct way to achieve this goal? What do you believe intelligence to be?
  - useruser125524 3y ago
    Ultimately we're just a collection of atoms obeying the laws of physics, but reducing all the complexity that entails doesn't really accomplish anything
    - gwoolhurme 3y ago
      This is my frustration put really well. When people talk about how humans are also just a form of LLM (not that the above comment did exactly that). That might even be true, but simplifying things to that degree doesn't help actually discuss what is going on. The original comment is as far as I know correct... while I don't have a PhD some of my undergraduate work was in control theory and ML, and it works really well. The underlying methods we used were from NASA in the late 70s.. surely there is something more in the field no?
lexandstuff 3y ago
I get that AGI has a formal definition, but if I take the words "Artificial General Intelligence" on their own, I would say they describe GPT4 perfectly. It can plan my holiday, write a cover letter, code up scripts, explain music theory to me, etc. It is artificial, clearly a form of intelligence, and has a general application.
- staticman2 3y ago
  One definition of AGI might be the system needs to be able to reason with small amounts of data. I watched a Youtube video where Geoffrey Hinton (i think) said humans do a lot with small datasets and these LLM systems only work with huge datasets. Im fact these systems arguably aren't reasoning at all, the giant datasets just allow it to provide the illusion of reasoning.
zemo 3y ago
“person with vested business interest says their sector/product/company is going to revolutionize the world” wow no way you don’t say
- two_in_one 3y ago
  I wouldn't be surprised if after this interview he got a few millions $$ more in his stock worth. It's damage management. They, and he personally, didn't see LLM potential.
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agentultra 3y ago
It seems to me that software developers are all too eager to attribute properties such as “intelligence,” to LLM’s which lead to strange, reductive conclusions that this is all humans are: token matching algorithms. There is much to intelligence that those who’ve been studying it in areas such as biology and ecology still do not understand. The role of emotions and how they work have a strong influence on our cognitive abilities and consciousness as a whole. This is rarely ever considered a part of intelligence in the AI space. And I think that’s rather the interesting part of all of this: we skip the artificial part and leap straight into deus ex machina. It is artificial and limited to what we choose to implement. Even unsupervised learning isn’t technically that marvellous under the hood. In the sense that it is unknowable and seemingly magical. I don’t agree that we’re a few years away from Data (a character from Star Trek : The Next Generation and an artificial life form) and we have no idea if we’d ever be able to implement Lore (a related character from the same show that has the benefits of being able to simulate emotions).
- jabradoodle 3y ago
  I don't think it is necessarily important how the human brain works. An interesting metaphor here is that aeroplanes don't work in a similar way to birds, the end goal is flight, not having wings that flap and are covered in feathers.
  - ChatGTP 3y ago
    You forgot to quote Max Tegmark? :) It was a good talk…
    - jabradoodle 3y ago
      Thanks, forgot where the analogy came from and should have taken the time to source it.
      - hammyhavoc 3y ago
        First you call it a metaphor, now you call it an analogy. Which are you using it as? An analogy highlights similarities, a metaphor is saying a bird is a plane. Is a nuclear power station a coal-fired power station? Both produce electricity. Is an EV an ICE? Both can get you from point A to point B. A statistical model is not the same as a complex neural network, and its capabilities are not comparable. I don't think pointing out similarities is very useful. Why not treat it like what it is? An LLM.
telotortium 3y ago
AI, when it was originally coined, was equivalent to what is meant by AGI now. Through enough hype and misapplication of the term to any new algorithm, AI eventually acquired in practice the meaning "any new nontrivial algorithm that does things that humans can perform" (until the shine wears off, in which case it's no longer AI - even A star was originally considered AI). Looks like AGI is going to go down the same path. I wonder what the replacement term for AGI will be.
lee101 3y ago
[dead]
jasfi 3y ago
The current approach to AGI, as seen with projects like AutoGPT and BabyAGI, is to call an LLM (GPT-4 is the current choice) to solve and generate useful content recursively. Tasks are output, so for every task generated the LLM is asked to recursively solve that task, which could involve creating new tasks. So far some small wins have been seen. Common problems involve looping and doing nothing. It's still early for these projects.
4ndrewl 3y ago
Given his remuneration is at least partially linked to the share price, "he would say that, wouldn't he."
deafpolygon 3y ago
Trying to drum up interest in Google!
plisking 3y ago
I think that AGI may already exist, perhaps on OpenAI's servers
cess11 3y ago
These people are confusing learning with intelligence. The latter is a property of a conscious being while a lot more beings have the ability to learn, a basic example would be genetic adaptation or immediate environmental adaptations in plants, neither of which could be considered intelligence. Learning is an automating activity, when you've learnt something it means you can do it without being intelligent about it, on 'autopilot' as it were. A crucial aspect of intelligence is the denial of learning when appropriate, i.e. not acting according to learning, which seems to be a conscious, prefrontal cortex related ability, and hence closely connected with anxiety and suspicion. Evolutionarily learning works well with slow changes in evolutionary pressure, intelligence gets useful when the pressure is erratic and evolutionary signals are unreliable in mediating information about how to survive and reproduce efficiently. The AGI believers in the capitalist class aren't alone in confusing this, learning is much simpler and more immediately rewarding than intelligence so the bourgeoisie has made learning their ideal for all of modernity and replaced educational exams based on more or less intelligent conversation with formal measurements of learning.
23B1 3y ago
Like many discussions around AI/AGI, the comments below show just how lacking we are in even basic vocabulary... to describe & communicate basic concepts. "Superintelligence" vs. "Useful Cognitive Function" etc.
ZiiS 3y ago
It is _possible_ we will be visited by advanced alien life in a few years. Obviously they could give us AGI or basically any other technology. None of our current approaches have demonstrated they will yield AGI in the next few years.
- SanderNL 3y ago
  ZiiS told us all our approaches to this problem are fruitless and will never result in anything resembling AGI. How exactly he knows this is unknown to us, because we are still researching the basic properties of the systems we are currently producing at a staggering rate. Nevertheless it is quite a relief. We can now let this all go and return to frolicking in the meadows again.
  - ZiiS 3y ago
    My point was not that the current approaches are fruitless; it is that we have no information to decide if they will lead to AGI in a few years or not. Whilst this fits a dictionary definition of "possible" they are trying to make it sound "likely" with no evidence.
    - SanderNL 3y ago
      Excuse me, I was being snarky. I agree that we are low on information, but I guess we disagree on how low. You imply we have so little information the outcome is basically random, which I think is a bit too extreme. I don't find it far-fetched to imagine current AI research - not just LLMs - to get us to AGI-likeness in years (5-10). I deliberately use "likeness", because I also think we will never agree on what it means and if we ever reach it. Digressing here because no one will read it anyway, but if my knowledge of humanity is anything to go by, we will be surrounded by robots and software systems of varying levels of intelligence doing just about anything a normal human could do and we would still be discussing if we ever reach mythical AGI. Personally I think abstract, pure form AGI is impossible, even in biological systems. We don't scale infinitely and I don't even mean in the physical "too-much-data-to-handle" sense, I mean qualitatively. I think there is a very real ceiling to what kinds of mentation are possible by us and thus what results are achievable. Again, not just quantitatively, but qualitatively. We have examples of this in the animal realm. Some of them show signs of for all intents and purposes "general" intelligence. But they will never scale to human levels of cognition. Even simple human concepts are out of reach, yet they outperform us on other problems (maze solving, memory, etc). You cannot teach a great ape what you can teach our children. People have tried. They are thus general, because you can teach them just about anything within their "bandwidth", but they are still constrained. I very strongly suspect the same holds for us. It's just that we have no superiors (or even peers) to compare to. I think future AI systems will doubt we are AGI.
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jokoon 3y ago
I tried to classify images using tensorflow and inception using a pre trained model, it was awfully slow. I asked almost everywhere for a faster and less accurate model, no answer. I'm starting to suspect that GPU vendors are the ones selling AI. If you think about it, software is often used by the hardware industry to increase sales, it's the law of Wirth. Seems like it's the norm now.
igravious 3y ago
But on the other hand … Bard, when compared with GPT-4, is disappointing. So there's that too.
camillomiller 3y ago
Winery owner says his wine is the best ever.
ChatGTP 3y ago
I'm confused about what the goal of "AI" is anymore. Does anyone else feel similar? Researches seem fixated to create something like "a really smart person or intellectual slave", LLMs make it seem like we're close to that I guess? Is there not a whole lot more usefulness in solving actual problems with "AI" without the potential risks and baggage of creating, I don't know, is it super capable idiot savant? The approach deep mind was taking before entering this sort of "talking computer" arms race seemed actually quite useful and less "disruptive". Things like AlphaFold are more inline with what I was hoping to see going forwards. Now I just don't really know what the the plan is? Is it to one day be able to sit at your computer and say things like: "I want you to solve cancer" and "replace my secretary, she's too expensive", "build as many paper clips as possible but don't hurt anyone?", and expect that it will kind of do it? Do we expect that everyone will freely have access to these systems or just a few people? Is this sustainable and practical long term? In one interview I saw, Ilya Sutskever has claimed every town, state and country will have sort of AI representative, and in another basically stating we might not have to work and become "enlightened beings". Why on earth do we need an AGI to become "enlightened beings", has this gentlemen never read any literature on "enlightenment"? I'm really struggling to see how the type of world some of these researchers seem to be gunning for is actually ideal or even wise even if achievable, especially given the mounting levels of anxiety around LLMs and their implications. Are the ethics ever actually considered? It seems like "building AGI" is kind of like, building a something (loosely defined) which could have a lot of negative unintended side effects, but for what now? Just intellectual curiosity ? Fulfilling a Sci-Fi fetish? Personally, I think this is what has spooked Geoff Hinton, he has seen an acceleration toward something, but he realizes we have zero idea what to do when or if when we build the "something". He now realizes the military or bad actors will take advantage of these AGI(?) and he might be alive to have to see the consequences of that.
- HybridCurve 3y ago
  >Why on earth do we need an AGI to become "enlightened beings", has this gentlemen never read any literature on "enlightenment"? I think you might be misconstruing his definition of 'enlightenment'. In this instance I believe he is referring to humanity having the time and freedom for the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual reasoning. There are a number of instances in fictional literature were the authors discuss worlds in which civilization has achieved a state of enlightenment and dedicate their lives exclusively to science, philosophy and the arts (Olaf Stapleton's First and Last Men, and Starmaker provide several) >but for what now? Just intellectual curiosity ? The purpose is out of exercise to understand it. But again, if we might produce an AGI which is capable of digesting massive amounts of knowledge, but with the ability to reason we might be able to achieve certain goals like fusion energy sooner than expected. IMO solving the energy problem in itself is worth the risk as our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels is an existential threat to life on this planet, not to mention it would rebalance the distribution on wealth and power around the world. As for Hinton, I think you are spot on with why he reacted this way. However, I facepalm every time the 'killer robots' example comes up because it is the worst example of the threats these things pose compared the following: - AI being used to manipulate public opinion on a massive scale creating a new age of demagoguery. - AI being used to fabricate different realities within an information sphere by generating text, imagery and audio/video media supporting a certain set of narratives. Essentially a type of super propaganda. - AI being granted trust to by humans to perform certain functions which it is not capable of, because humans are too ignorant to subject it to proper scrutiny. - AI being used to manipulate either markets, financial institutions or economies at a massive scale, dramatically shifting the balance of power around the world. Essentially, the general public's concept of warfare needs to be broadened to consider non-kinetic conflict. Warfare is effectively a pursuit in the change of policy in other nations(or groups) by many different means. The last resort of these methods is inevitably a kinetic engagement, where all other approaches have failed to achieve the desired result. Altering this viewpoint allows us to reassess what we consider to be weapons rather than tools, and gives us a better idea of where we should expect these threats to emerge first.
liampulles 3y ago
If I'm trying to solve a generic problem, I try to break it down into pieces which I have familiarity with and barring that I will look to google to fill the gaps. I might try think of alternative approaches and compare them, and reflect on individual steps to try and improve them. I'll review my work and test it as I go to ensure it is actually solving the problem. Given some of the capabilities I have seen with chain-of-thought processing, embeddings, and vector databases - it does seem to me conceivable that computers could be made to do all of this. One gap maybe is being able to pick up that the problem statement is wrong, i.e. not solving the right problem, or being aware of subtle undocumented details about the system and the business that need to be factored in. The AI needs to actually know about these subtle details somehow in order to factor them in. Perhaps that is the big problem that remains - capturing subtle details about the world.
mensetmanusman 3y ago
This is equivalent to saying self-driving cars are possible in a few years.
stan_kirdey 3y ago
... "but it will depend on how well of a job is done by OpenAI" ... :D (just being pett)
Havoc 3y ago
Seems like some sort of "spark" breakthrough is still needed though. Just make the model bigger just seems to make it broader but not really AGI
SilverBirch 3y ago
The thing that's interested me about the last 5 or so years is how much its become the case that everyone is now seeking to be a thought leader. It seems like at some point the VC crowd decided that because money was basically free they needed other ways of sourcing investment opportunities so they started trying to become "thought leaders". Which kind of makes sense, if you do it well the branding can be an advantage. But it runs into this problem of toxic positivity. No one wants to hear "Well, this technology, like every technology before it, is promising but unlikely to fully solve 99.99% of the problems it looks promising on today". So instead of having a real conversation about the viability of autonomous vehicles you've got motivated actors and lobotomized supporters making end-of-days style claims about technology, and each time these claims turn out to be totally unfounded we all just move on to the next topic. Can we stop and disect the failing gig-economy model, web3 movement, and elf-driving before we listen to those same people about AI? That's kind of what I'd like to know, before the CEO of DeepMind opines on AI I'd like to hear his thoughts on what he learned about his last predictions.

190 points by type4 3y ago

a13o 3y ago

Since 'AI' and 'AGI' are so poorly defined, it's allowed marketers to make un-disprovable claims that they have it for sale. These terms are now hyperbolic synonyms for 'algorithm'.

enahs-sf 3y ago

https://archive.ph/WWKQ3 https://archive.ph/WWKQ3

ActorNightly 3y ago

I wish I could bet real money on this cause I would bet hard against this statement. The issue is that nobody seems to agree what AGI even is.

AnimalMuppet 3y ago
Without a clear definition of AGI, it's going to be hard deciding who won...
HDThoreaun 3y ago
There are betting markets that have odds up for this, you generally have to pay in crypto and the odds suck given your money is locked up for a decade plus(if they pay out at all). Importantly though, what do you think the odds are? I don't think anyone is saying 50/50 in a few years, just greater than 0%.
- ActorNightly 3y ago
  If an AGI means equivalent to a human (not just online, but in full robotic form, even if compute is not done in the body), then Id put 0% in the next 5 years. Maybe like 5% in 10 years, but that human will be very much limited, since it will most likely be trained using traditional methods, which means for the physical interaction part it will have to be trained on a representative subset of physical tasks, and just like ChatGPT, it will fall short in areas. If an AGI means that something is sentient enough to be able to rewrite itself to be better, id put 0% in the next 50 years. There needs to be way to run accurate simulations of reality faster than reality, which is a fundamental physics problem as well as a computation one. What is going to happen is more and more efficient information compression that will appear like AI, but under the hood it will basically be just emergent software. It will be totally possible in the future to ask an agent and get a full step by step plan of building a personal VTOL in your garage without specialized equipment, but all that is is just information from different domains rolled into one compression algorithm with efficient language based search.
hderms 3y ago
Well in real terms, isn't all it takes is something that's a convincing enough forgery? Like why the turing test was considered interesting at one point. I don't think drawing a line is necessary for us to quickly become caught off guard by developments in this space. For the record, I don't believe we're close to AGI but I'm also pretty far from knowing anything about that field.
- dougmwne 3y ago
  Seems like a no lose bet no matter the odds. If you win, life goes on and you can collect a bit of money. If you lose, money becomes worthless and the surface of the earth gets transformed into a computing substrate.
  - blagie 3y ago
    I don't know. Having interacted with LLMs at different levels, they resemble a very sophisticated, alien intelligence trying to pretend to be human. It's like me pretending to be a dog; even if I were to emulate a dog perfectly, I wouldn't have the same emotions; I'd be pretending. We have no idea what emotions, motivations, behaviors, or goals AIs have, will have, or if they'll have something as of yet unconvinced that's not emotions or motivations, but just alien. We evolved to self-preserve and breed. Modern AIs evolve to pretend to write human text. It's not clear there is any intention to survive, reproduce, or turn the surface of the earth into a computing substrate. There's a million different dangers -- and I suspect the real ones are ones we haven't conceived of. Whether they'll materialize or how depends on on how we evolve them, and I expect we can't predict it. To me, much more likely than earth-as-a-computing-substrate is humans-as-brainwashed-consumers. Market forces will push for AIs to write text which draws eyeballs. Those models won't care about truth, ethics, or much of anything other than getting you addicted to reading what they write (or watching what they create). At that point, we can destroy ourselves just fine. But even more likely is something no one has thought of.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      > We have no idea what emotions, motivations, behaviors, or goals AIs have, will have, or if they'll have something as of yet unconvinced that's not emotions or motivations, but just alien. AIs don't have emotions, motivations or goals. They don't pretend, because pretending implies intent, they don't have intent. They do what they're created to do. Humans are already brainwashed consumers. Welcome to marketing/advertising and late-stage capitalism. The ability of human beings to do what you're describing is much more effective than that of AI at present, ergo the "danger" has been here for decades. Smoking? Junk food? Radium water? Fast fashion? Equestrian ivermectin? Shall I continue?
boplicity 3y ago
It's boils down to a question of "personhood." It turns out that's a political question and not a scientific one. Another way to say this: when will someone allow an AGI to have free rein and independent choice and power? How much power will we allow it?
- hammyhavoc 3y ago
  Personhood has nothing to do with a hypothetical AGI happening. It actually boils down to hypothetical architecture even leading to AGI in the first place. It's a technical question, not a political question. First it would need to actually have independent thought to be granted anything.
proc0 3y ago
That's the trick, it just means it can do various task at human level. I think the original meaning of "general" is a reference to human intelligence kind of general, in other words Artificial Human Intelligence could be a better name for "true AGI".
giuscri 3y ago
To me the AGI we expect is one that just want to be free
HybridCurve 3y ago
I agree on this. I think we might also assume that we will believe we have created it before we actually do, but then simultaneously deny that we have created it after we already have.

marricks 3y ago

I really wonder what the next AI winter will be like. Edit: Perhaps OpenAI becomes a major tech player and we just see a cooling off of other AI investments as LLM becomes a known in terms of its strengths and weaknesses. Its abilities reach a natural limit which is still generally very useful. Or maybe folks realize the degree of lies/mistruths inherent in its content is actually unmanageable and can’t be improved. After the hype wears off what it will be used for gets greatly curtailed and we see a big contraction. And there’s so many interesting side tracks along the way. I’m hoping for another AOL Time Warner style shit show of a merger. That’d be fun and could really happen down any path.

morkalork 3y ago
Warm with a hint of ionizing radiation.
majikaja 3y ago
>we just see a cooling off of other endeavors as LLM becomes a known in terms of its strengths and weaknesses and it’s abilities reach a natural limit which is still general useful. This is my prediction If the training set is just the internet, it will be not much different than someone who spends all their lives in their room in front of their computer.
- blagie 3y ago
  I don't think that's a limit. If you give me $10M and 5 years, I can tell you a half-dozen ways to train models better than GPT4, primarily by having them do richer tasks than text completion, by having them evaluate themselves in richer ways, by having workflows around them, and by having shared models perform multiple types of tasks (e.g. text, image, controls, etc.). It's not that I'm especially smart; many others could tell you ways to do the same thing now that there's an initial proof-of-concept. It's that these things are new enough no one has had those five years yet. GPT4 came out two months ago, ChatGPT maybe seven months ago, and GPT3 three years ago. I can't predict if these things will level off, grow linearly, grow exponentially, Moore's Law style, or explode off into the singularity. I can say GPT4 is nowhere close to the limit.

dzink 3y ago

AGI is the point when humans lose control, but between now and then they will lose a lot of white collar employment jobs. Based on the increase in productivity of anyone equipped with AI tools, we may see a lot of self-employment become more and more viable and lucrative.

__MatrixMan__ 3y ago
I'll consider us lucky if losing control means something intelligent has taken control. Like most car accidents, it could end up just being a series of dumb mistakes.
CatWChainsaw 3y ago
Per that AI Dilemma documentary, we likely already lost control at "first contact" of social media.

ftxbro 3y ago

[flagged]

nextworddev 3y ago
Always found it interesting that GPT4 sparks of AGI paper was written mid-2022 meaning they probably knew of everything Twitter AI is discussing 1.5 years ago. Explains why it feels like Microsoft is cranking out so much software these days
- IAmGraydon 3y ago
  What are you talking about? That paper was released as v1 in March 2023.

wg0 3y ago

The other few things possible in next few years for past few years are: 1. Fusion 2. Self driving cars. 3. Ubiquitous, generally available and stable 8192 bit quantum computers. 4. High energy density grid scale batteries. Just few more "this maybe the... what could revolutionize..." articles away. What we forget is that it is in these people's business interest (executives making such statements) to state the exaggerated version of a future which drives the investors of all levels to allocate funds under FOMO which pumps up share price which is the end goal anyway, through a breakthrough or without. EDIT: Merged another comment to keep all in one place.

pnpnp 3y ago
Just a point with #4. Grid scale batteries don’t need to be “high energy density” like EVs. I would argue that cost is probably the biggest factor, and it’s already across the cost/benefit barrier in many markets.
- oittaa 3y ago
  This. It surprises me every time when battery or any "green" technology is discussed here and 90% of Americans keep parroting Trump's talking points. For example one of the comments above is talking about how EVs are just "a rich boy's toy".
  - alex_duf 3y ago
    In fairness EVs still are more expensive than petrol cars. I'm hoping this will change though
    - oittaa 3y ago
      On average usage case Tesla Model 3 is already cheaper than Toyota Corolla. Chevy Bolt, while they still sell it, is even cheaper. inb4: I only buy 20 year old cars for $500 and I want to drive 1000km without stopping while shitting in my pants.
TheDudeMan 3y ago

deleted 3y ago

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paxys 3y ago

I predict that the fight will be more about defining intelligence than inventing it. No one knows what AGI is. There isn't going to be some switch that flips to take us from AI to AGI. These tools we have today will just keep getting incrementally better, and some new ones will pop up, and at some point we'll have to stop and say "yeah, this is good enough to qualify". And everyone will have their own opinion on what that point is. Plenty of people even think that we are there today, and there's nothing stopping Google or OpenAI from claiming it if they want. And you can say the exact same for consciousness, sentience, self-awareness etc.

davidthewatson 3y ago
That's right, whether we call it almost intelligence or asymptotic intelligence, or just plain artifice. There are reasons Ray Kurzweil used the term "spiritual" in the Age of Spiritual Machines. Among those reasons is that "spiritual" is much more difficult to define with any consensus among experts. And indeed, there's an inflection point coming. What this is, is not at all clear. However, I'd predict that the answer lies with the realization that, given the limits of conversing with LLMS and GPT, the implication is that there's a human-computer sensemaking loop: https://www.efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/event/180918-conference/presentations/20-3_07_Pirolli.pdf https://www.efsa.europa.eu/sites/default/files/event/180918-... The difference with this HCI is that you'd not hire a human collaborator who lied to you with or without being aware of their own lack of veracity. Here, we'll burn fields full of GPUs at massive cost to get an answer, even though the outcome may be advertising the fact that the AI is wrong. There is learning, but it's going to be costly and painful.
am44jnsf 3y ago
I don't think that we'll ever get aligned on defining intelligence. We'll be busy debating it and one day look up and ... sh*
deleted 3y ago
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Xcelerate 3y ago
> I predict that the fight will be more about defining intelligence than inventing it. I think the internet has given a pretty clear definition on what intelligence is: it’s whatever AI can’t do yet.

staticman2 3y ago

Is this like when the Google self driving car director Chris Urmson said in 2015 his 11 year old son would never need to take a drivers exam? I have a hunch when they decide who to hire for upper management, they select for whoever promises the moon. The person making the promises may not even believe it.

morkalork 3y ago
Forget self-driving cars, we still have radiologists.
dmix 3y ago
It’s easier to call it AGI to “normies” rather than what it will probably be IRL which is many thousands of niche disruptions via the specific innovations of recent (LLM/deep learning/GPU+AI tooling+education investments)… that we will as usual have a difficult time predicting what it looks like even a decade from now. Stuff like programming assistance, new markets driven by GPT style APIs, and the mountain of productivity gains will help subsidize and accelerate the next tranche of investment until we reach the next R&D milestone that will again totally “revolutionize” the world and lead to mass employment for the 10th time this century. I look forward to having this conversation on HN again in 5-10yrs as the world slowly gets better at a slightly faster (yet less news worthy) rate.
rqtwteye 3y ago
"Is this like when the Google self driving car director Chris Urmson said in 2015 his 11 year old son would never need to take a drivers exam?" He probably meant that he has enough money so he can hire a driver for his son.
strikelaserclaw 3y ago
it is business as usual for execs to generate hype (increase share price temporarily).

ckemere 3y ago

Several comments have touched on this, but wouldn't you define an AGI as something that could learn to drive a car? I think every (reasonable ( person understands self driving is >10 years away. So shouldn't AGI be?

qeternity 3y ago
Even if you believe AGI is imminent, I'm not sure this test holds. Driving requires much more than intelligence: blind people cannot drive. It's possible that we're limited on the hardware / modality front.
jy1 3y ago
What makes you say self driving is 10 years away?
- nsxwolf 3y ago
  5 years ago L5 autonomy was being released any day now, but now nobody talks about it anymore. It seems like a handful of self driving cars have been driving around in circles in a couple cities forever now and everyone just keeps giving the same demo.
paxys 3y ago
Not necessarily. It could be that AGI exists and can learn how to drive a car, but we don't have good enough cameras/LIDARs/other sensors to make it work. Or the computation/battery power needed to do so isn't possible to fit in a car. AGI is about inventing the brain, while the car is an entire body.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  In the General case* there is no functional brain without a functional body *One can nitpick yourself into creating a series of examples of fictional disabled people but let’s not bikeshed please
  - 3y ago

jjlustig 3y ago

Translation: “I realize that Google is behind on the AI race (and on our corporate strategy in general), so I’m going to fear monger you, the investment community, with claims of “AGI soon” to attract investments and prevent our stock from plummeting.”

ftxbro 3y ago

I am curious to do a poll of what AGI means to each person. It stands for "Artificial General Intelligence" but some have different definitions. For some, it might mean any that is as capable as a normal human. For some, non-biological life axiomatically cannot become AGI. For some, it might require literal omniscience and omnipotence and accepting anything as AGI means, to them, that they are being told to worship it as a God. For some, it might mean something more like an AI that is more competent than the most competent human at literally every task. For some, acknowledging it means that we must acknowledge it has person-like rights. For some it cannot be AGI if it lies. For some it cannot be AGI if it makes any mistake. For some it cannot be AGI until it has more power than humans. These are several definitions and implications that are partially mutually conflicting but I have seen different people say that AGI is each different one of those.

mypastself 3y ago
Yeah, even the linked article acknowledges the problem while defining AGI as a computer with “human-level cognitive abilities”, which is broad enough as to be borderline useless. Whenever a major company references AGI, as is the case here, I mentally replace the term with “Skynet”, because I expect the statement’s aim is to instill fear. If Google ever develops AGI, you can be sure they’ll call it something else.
- ftxbro 3y ago
  > If Google ever develops AGI, you can be sure they’ll call it something else. They will paint it in their primary colors logo and call it the Happy Fun Ball.

23B1 3y ago

In a few more years, that mail-order airborne nanotech virus that travels kills everyone in an instant should be available too.

Beaver117 3y ago
Definitely already have that. It just has some nasty side effect or expense or something preventing them from using it

matteoraso 3y ago

I don't think there's been any progress on AGI, actually. Even though there's a lot of powerful AI programs out there, they're really nothing more than complex tools created to solve problems. A few other commenters mentioned that there's no good definition for what AGI would actually mean, but a good starting point that I think we can all agree on is that an AGI would need to have some level of autonomy. That being said, even if you did make an AI that was autonomous, I still think that it's a leap to call it an AGI. The way I look at it, if you did all the math by hand, you wouldn't call it intelligent, so you shouldn't call it intelligent if the math was done by a computer.

NumberWangMan 3y ago
I don't think that doing the math by hand to simulate a machine intelligence makes it not intelligent, any more than doing a simulation of all the electrochemical signals in a human brain by hand would make a human not intelligent. Aside from the infeasible amount of time it would take, it's the same thing. As for autonomy, LLMs don't have autonomy by themselves. But they can be pretty easily combined with other systems, connected to the outside world, in a way that seems pretty darned autonomous to me. (https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT https://github.com/Significant-Gravitas/Auto-GPT). And that's basically a duct-tape-and-string version. Given how new these LLMs are, it's likely we're barely scratching the surface.
- NumberWangMan 3y ago
  Also: > Even though there's a lot of powerful AI programs out there, they're really nothing more than complex tools created to solve problems. That's what they're designed to be, yes, but sometimes you end up with something more than what you intended.

PheonixPharts 3y ago

As someone who has worked in the field of AI/ML for quite awhile now, the problem with current AGI predictions is ML hasn't done anything new since the 80s (or arguably earlier). At the end of the day all ML is using gradient descent to do some sort of non-linear projection of the data on to a latent space, then doing some relatively simple math in this latent space to perform some task. Personally I think the limits of this technique are far better than I would have thought 10 years ago. However we are only near AGI if this is in fact how intelligence works (or can work) and I don't believe we've seen any evidence of this. And there are some very big assumptions baked into this approach. Essentially all we've done is pushed the basic model proposed by linear regression to it's absolutely limits, but, as impressive as the results are, I'm not entirely convinced this will get is over the limit to AGI.

soulofmischief 3y ago
Ultimately you are just a system who maintains homeostasis by modeling your environment and reprojecting it to find patterns which can be used to make actions with predictable outcomes. Is this intelligence? Is there only one correct way to achieve this goal? What do you believe intelligence to be?
- useruser125524 3y ago
  Ultimately we're just a collection of atoms obeying the laws of physics, but reducing all the complexity that entails doesn't really accomplish anything
  - gwoolhurme 3y ago
    This is my frustration put really well. When people talk about how humans are also just a form of LLM (not that the above comment did exactly that). That might even be true, but simplifying things to that degree doesn't help actually discuss what is going on. The original comment is as far as I know correct... while I don't have a PhD some of my undergraduate work was in control theory and ML, and it works really well. The underlying methods we used were from NASA in the late 70s.. surely there is something more in the field no?

lexandstuff 3y ago

I get that AGI has a formal definition, but if I take the words "Artificial General Intelligence" on their own, I would say they describe GPT4 perfectly. It can plan my holiday, write a cover letter, code up scripts, explain music theory to me, etc. It is artificial, clearly a form of intelligence, and has a general application.

staticman2 3y ago
One definition of AGI might be the system needs to be able to reason with small amounts of data. I watched a Youtube video where Geoffrey Hinton (i think) said humans do a lot with small datasets and these LLM systems only work with huge datasets. Im fact these systems arguably aren't reasoning at all, the giant datasets just allow it to provide the illusion of reasoning.

zemo 3y ago

“person with vested business interest says their sector/product/company is going to revolutionize the world” wow no way you don’t say

two_in_one 3y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if after this interview he got a few millions $$ more in his stock worth. It's damage management. They, and he personally, didn't see LLM potential.

deleted 3y ago

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agentultra 3y ago

It seems to me that software developers are all too eager to attribute properties such as “intelligence,” to LLM’s which lead to strange, reductive conclusions that this is all humans are: token matching algorithms. There is much to intelligence that those who’ve been studying it in areas such as biology and ecology still do not understand. The role of emotions and how they work have a strong influence on our cognitive abilities and consciousness as a whole. This is rarely ever considered a part of intelligence in the AI space. And I think that’s rather the interesting part of all of this: we skip the artificial part and leap straight into deus ex machina. It is artificial and limited to what we choose to implement. Even unsupervised learning isn’t technically that marvellous under the hood. In the sense that it is unknowable and seemingly magical. I don’t agree that we’re a few years away from Data (a character from Star Trek : The Next Generation and an artificial life form) and we have no idea if we’d ever be able to implement Lore (a related character from the same show that has the benefits of being able to simulate emotions).

jabradoodle 3y ago
I don't think it is necessarily important how the human brain works. An interesting metaphor here is that aeroplanes don't work in a similar way to birds, the end goal is flight, not having wings that flap and are covered in feathers.
- ChatGTP 3y ago
  You forgot to quote Max Tegmark? :) It was a good talk…
  - jabradoodle 3y ago
    Thanks, forgot where the analogy came from and should have taken the time to source it.
    - hammyhavoc 3y ago
      First you call it a metaphor, now you call it an analogy. Which are you using it as? An analogy highlights similarities, a metaphor is saying a bird is a plane. Is a nuclear power station a coal-fired power station? Both produce electricity. Is an EV an ICE? Both can get you from point A to point B. A statistical model is not the same as a complex neural network, and its capabilities are not comparable. I don't think pointing out similarities is very useful. Why not treat it like what it is? An LLM.

telotortium 3y ago

AI, when it was originally coined, was equivalent to what is meant by AGI now. Through enough hype and misapplication of the term to any new algorithm, AI eventually acquired in practice the meaning "any new nontrivial algorithm that does things that humans can perform" (until the shine wears off, in which case it's no longer AI - even A star was originally considered AI). Looks like AGI is going to go down the same path. I wonder what the replacement term for AGI will be.

lee101 3y ago

[dead]

jasfi 3y ago

The current approach to AGI, as seen with projects like AutoGPT and BabyAGI, is to call an LLM (GPT-4 is the current choice) to solve and generate useful content recursively. Tasks are output, so for every task generated the LLM is asked to recursively solve that task, which could involve creating new tasks. So far some small wins have been seen. Common problems involve looping and doing nothing. It's still early for these projects.

4ndrewl 3y ago

Given his remuneration is at least partially linked to the share price, "he would say that, wouldn't he."

deafpolygon 3y ago

Trying to drum up interest in Google!

plisking 3y ago

I think that AGI may already exist, perhaps on OpenAI's servers

cess11 3y ago

These people are confusing learning with intelligence. The latter is a property of a conscious being while a lot more beings have the ability to learn, a basic example would be genetic adaptation or immediate environmental adaptations in plants, neither of which could be considered intelligence. Learning is an automating activity, when you've learnt something it means you can do it without being intelligent about it, on 'autopilot' as it were. A crucial aspect of intelligence is the denial of learning when appropriate, i.e. not acting according to learning, which seems to be a conscious, prefrontal cortex related ability, and hence closely connected with anxiety and suspicion. Evolutionarily learning works well with slow changes in evolutionary pressure, intelligence gets useful when the pressure is erratic and evolutionary signals are unreliable in mediating information about how to survive and reproduce efficiently. The AGI believers in the capitalist class aren't alone in confusing this, learning is much simpler and more immediately rewarding than intelligence so the bourgeoisie has made learning their ideal for all of modernity and replaced educational exams based on more or less intelligent conversation with formal measurements of learning.

23B1 3y ago

Like many discussions around AI/AGI, the comments below show just how lacking we are in even basic vocabulary... to describe & communicate basic concepts. "Superintelligence" vs. "Useful Cognitive Function" etc.

ZiiS 3y ago

It is _possible_ we will be visited by advanced alien life in a few years. Obviously they could give us AGI or basically any other technology. None of our current approaches have demonstrated they will yield AGI in the next few years.

SanderNL 3y ago
ZiiS told us all our approaches to this problem are fruitless and will never result in anything resembling AGI. How exactly he knows this is unknown to us, because we are still researching the basic properties of the systems we are currently producing at a staggering rate. Nevertheless it is quite a relief. We can now let this all go and return to frolicking in the meadows again.
- ZiiS 3y ago
  My point was not that the current approaches are fruitless; it is that we have no information to decide if they will lead to AGI in a few years or not. Whilst this fits a dictionary definition of "possible" they are trying to make it sound "likely" with no evidence.
  - SanderNL 3y ago
    Excuse me, I was being snarky. I agree that we are low on information, but I guess we disagree on how low. You imply we have so little information the outcome is basically random, which I think is a bit too extreme. I don't find it far-fetched to imagine current AI research - not just LLMs - to get us to AGI-likeness in years (5-10). I deliberately use "likeness", because I also think we will never agree on what it means and if we ever reach it. Digressing here because no one will read it anyway, but if my knowledge of humanity is anything to go by, we will be surrounded by robots and software systems of varying levels of intelligence doing just about anything a normal human could do and we would still be discussing if we ever reach mythical AGI. Personally I think abstract, pure form AGI is impossible, even in biological systems. We don't scale infinitely and I don't even mean in the physical "too-much-data-to-handle" sense, I mean qualitatively. I think there is a very real ceiling to what kinds of mentation are possible by us and thus what results are achievable. Again, not just quantitatively, but qualitatively. We have examples of this in the animal realm. Some of them show signs of for all intents and purposes "general" intelligence. But they will never scale to human levels of cognition. Even simple human concepts are out of reach, yet they outperform us on other problems (maze solving, memory, etc). You cannot teach a great ape what you can teach our children. People have tried. They are thus general, because you can teach them just about anything within their "bandwidth", but they are still constrained. I very strongly suspect the same holds for us. It's just that we have no superiors (or even peers) to compare to. I think future AI systems will doubt we are AGI.

deleted 3y ago

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jokoon 3y ago

I tried to classify images using tensorflow and inception using a pre trained model, it was awfully slow. I asked almost everywhere for a faster and less accurate model, no answer. I'm starting to suspect that GPU vendors are the ones selling AI. If you think about it, software is often used by the hardware industry to increase sales, it's the law of Wirth. Seems like it's the norm now.

igravious 3y ago

But on the other hand … Bard, when compared with GPT-4, is disappointing. So there's that too.

camillomiller 3y ago

Winery owner says his wine is the best ever.

ChatGTP 3y ago

I'm confused about what the goal of "AI" is anymore. Does anyone else feel similar? Researches seem fixated to create something like "a really smart person or intellectual slave", LLMs make it seem like we're close to that I guess? Is there not a whole lot more usefulness in solving actual problems with "AI" without the potential risks and baggage of creating, I don't know, is it super capable idiot savant? The approach deep mind was taking before entering this sort of "talking computer" arms race seemed actually quite useful and less "disruptive". Things like AlphaFold are more inline with what I was hoping to see going forwards. Now I just don't really know what the the plan is? Is it to one day be able to sit at your computer and say things like: "I want you to solve cancer" and "replace my secretary, she's too expensive", "build as many paper clips as possible but don't hurt anyone?", and expect that it will kind of do it? Do we expect that everyone will freely have access to these systems or just a few people? Is this sustainable and practical long term? In one interview I saw, Ilya Sutskever has claimed every town, state and country will have sort of AI representative, and in another basically stating we might not have to work and become "enlightened beings". Why on earth do we need an AGI to become "enlightened beings", has this gentlemen never read any literature on "enlightenment"? I'm really struggling to see how the type of world some of these researchers seem to be gunning for is actually ideal or even wise even if achievable, especially given the mounting levels of anxiety around LLMs and their implications. Are the ethics ever actually considered? It seems like "building AGI" is kind of like, building a something (loosely defined) which could have a lot of negative unintended side effects, but for what now? Just intellectual curiosity ? Fulfilling a Sci-Fi fetish? Personally, I think this is what has spooked Geoff Hinton, he has seen an acceleration toward something, but he realizes we have zero idea what to do when or if when we build the "something". He now realizes the military or bad actors will take advantage of these AGI(?) and he might be alive to have to see the consequences of that.

HybridCurve 3y ago
>Why on earth do we need an AGI to become "enlightened beings", has this gentlemen never read any literature on "enlightenment"? I think you might be misconstruing his definition of 'enlightenment'. In this instance I believe he is referring to humanity having the time and freedom for the pursuit of knowledge and intellectual reasoning. There are a number of instances in fictional literature were the authors discuss worlds in which civilization has achieved a state of enlightenment and dedicate their lives exclusively to science, philosophy and the arts (Olaf Stapleton's First and Last Men, and Starmaker provide several) >but for what now? Just intellectual curiosity ? The purpose is out of exercise to understand it. But again, if we might produce an AGI which is capable of digesting massive amounts of knowledge, but with the ability to reason we might be able to achieve certain goals like fusion energy sooner than expected. IMO solving the energy problem in itself is worth the risk as our uncontrolled use of fossil fuels is an existential threat to life on this planet, not to mention it would rebalance the distribution on wealth and power around the world. As for Hinton, I think you are spot on with why he reacted this way. However, I facepalm every time the 'killer robots' example comes up because it is the worst example of the threats these things pose compared the following: - AI being used to manipulate public opinion on a massive scale creating a new age of demagoguery. - AI being used to fabricate different realities within an information sphere by generating text, imagery and audio/video media supporting a certain set of narratives. Essentially a type of super propaganda. - AI being granted trust to by humans to perform certain functions which it is not capable of, because humans are too ignorant to subject it to proper scrutiny. - AI being used to manipulate either markets, financial institutions or economies at a massive scale, dramatically shifting the balance of power around the world. Essentially, the general public's concept of warfare needs to be broadened to consider non-kinetic conflict. Warfare is effectively a pursuit in the change of policy in other nations(or groups) by many different means. The last resort of these methods is inevitably a kinetic engagement, where all other approaches have failed to achieve the desired result. Altering this viewpoint allows us to reassess what we consider to be weapons rather than tools, and gives us a better idea of where we should expect these threats to emerge first.

liampulles 3y ago

If I'm trying to solve a generic problem, I try to break it down into pieces which I have familiarity with and barring that I will look to google to fill the gaps. I might try think of alternative approaches and compare them, and reflect on individual steps to try and improve them. I'll review my work and test it as I go to ensure it is actually solving the problem. Given some of the capabilities I have seen with chain-of-thought processing, embeddings, and vector databases - it does seem to me conceivable that computers could be made to do all of this. One gap maybe is being able to pick up that the problem statement is wrong, i.e. not solving the right problem, or being aware of subtle undocumented details about the system and the business that need to be factored in. The AI needs to actually know about these subtle details somehow in order to factor them in. Perhaps that is the big problem that remains - capturing subtle details about the world.

mensetmanusman 3y ago

This is equivalent to saying self-driving cars are possible in a few years.

stan_kirdey 3y ago

... "but it will depend on how well of a job is done by OpenAI" ... :D (just being pett)

Havoc 3y ago

Seems like some sort of "spark" breakthrough is still needed though. Just make the model bigger just seems to make it broader but not really AGI

SilverBirch 3y ago

The thing that's interested me about the last 5 or so years is how much its become the case that everyone is now seeking to be a thought leader. It seems like at some point the VC crowd decided that because money was basically free they needed other ways of sourcing investment opportunities so they started trying to become "thought leaders". Which kind of makes sense, if you do it well the branding can be an advantage. But it runs into this problem of toxic positivity. No one wants to hear "Well, this technology, like every technology before it, is promising but unlikely to fully solve 99.99% of the problems it looks promising on today". So instead of having a real conversation about the viability of autonomous vehicles you've got motivated actors and lobotomized supporters making end-of-days style claims about technology, and each time these claims turn out to be totally unfounded we all just move on to the next topic. Can we stop and disect the failing gig-economy model, web3 movement, and elf-driving before we listen to those same people about AI? That's kind of what I'd like to know, before the CEO of DeepMind opines on AI I'd like to hear his thoughts on what he learned about his last predictions.