4 ms·

I don't know, but I'd posit that anybody who answers "definitely yes" or "definitely no" doesn't know what they are talking about. And that's because we, collec

I don't know, but I'd posit that anybody who answers "definitely yes" or "definitely no" doesn't know what they are talking about. And that's because we, collectively, really have no way of knowing how close to AGI we are. We struggle enough to define and measure human intelligence, and adding what is arguably a new "kind" of intelligence to the pot just complicates matters even more. So as of today, we don't really have any kind of simple metric like "IQ" that we can apply to AI systems, and even if we did have the metric, at this point we wouldn't really know it's range, whether to expect it to be a linear function or not, etc. That said... does it seem clear that we are making some kind of progress? I'd say yes, but with the admission that that's somewhat subjective. In particular, even though we know that current AI systems are getting better at doing whatever they do, we don't really know if that meaningfully counts as progress towards AGI. It is possible, for example, that LLM approaches will hit a ceiling in their development, and that the much feared "GPT 17" really won't even be a thing. And it may likewise turn out that the progress made on LLM's doesn't turn out to contribute much at all to whatever the eventual mechanism behind AGI turns out to be. Is that the way I expect things to play out? Not sure. I have a hunch that LLM's will prove to be insufficient to qualify as AGI on their own, but that they may well serve as an element of a modular / hybrid system that includes LLMs, reasoners using deduction, induction, and abduction, evolutionary algorithms, and FSM-knows what else.

reitanqild 4y ago
Related (and since you qualify the answers as "definitely yes" or "definitely no" I don't think it subtracts from what you say, but rather just adds to it: > When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. (Clarkes first law, copied from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)
- mindcrime 4y ago
  > When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Agreed!
- dS0rrow 4y ago
  From the wikipedia page you linked: Isaac Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law: "When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervour and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right."
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Why would anyone think that general intelligence is impossible when there are 8 billion copies of it running around currently?
    - dS0rrow 4y ago
      Not achievable with current methods != Impossible
stephc_int13 4y ago
I fully agree. Predicting future events is even more difficult than it seems and we constantly fail. The only thing we can reasonably say about the state of AI is that we are closer to so-called AGI. We're seeing exciting progress and that it turn is attracting more efforts in the field, potentially leading to an acceleration. But we could hit a wall, for many reasons, the field is almost entirely filled by unknown unknowns. Nuclear fusion, Quantum Computing, Nanotech, Genetic Engineering, all of those fields are still evolving, slowly, because of technological and scientifical roadblocks.
mpwouden 4y ago
I think the bigger issue I have is that I think we risk treating them as if they were AGI and that almost then makes them so but with greater risk. It's also a bit of a shifting goal posts in some ways too.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Where the goal posts are is really undefined. Ask 50 scientists for an exact definition of AGI and you'll get 50 different answers. Because of this we need to some up with sets of well defined measures of increasing capabilities that systems can be said to meet.
titzer 4y ago
I don't know if we're close, but it seems like a lot of people have an implicit assumption that AGI means we created an artificial person. When in reality whatever intelligent things we create in the digital world are not going to behave like people. I mean, an AGI didn't poop its pants in 3rd grade or have a disapproving father or get ridiculed by a bully or a million other things that people normally go through in their lives that lead to their quirky personalities. It's going to be an anti-septically sheltered weirdo with super-human reasoning and a whole lot of unfunny jokes.
- mindcrime 4y ago
  I don't know if we're close, but it seems like a lot of people have an implicit assumption that AGI means we created an artificial person. When in reality whatever intelligent things we create in the digital world are not going to behave like people. I mean, an AGI didn't poop its pants in 3rd grade or have a disapproving father or get ridiculed by a bully or a million other things that people normally go through in their lives that lead to their quirky personalities. Agreed. In fact, if you go back through my HN comment history (not an exercise I actually suggest mind you) you'll see that I frequently harp on the distinction between "human level" intelligence and "human like" intelligence. Where in my lexicon, those are distinguished largely the absence of actual reference to human experiences like "getting ridiculed by a bully" or "pooping your pants in 3rd grade" in the case of "human level, but not human like" AI. I think not everyone agrees that this distinction is important, or maybe they just haven't spent enough time thinking about the implications. But I believe it is important to call this out and make clear which scenario we're talking about in many (most?) contexts.

reitanqild 4y ago

Related (and since you qualify the answers as "definitely yes" or "definitely no" I don't think it subtracts from what you say, but rather just adds to it: > When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. (Clarkes first law, copied from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws)

mindcrime 4y ago
> When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong. Agreed!
dS0rrow 4y ago
From the wikipedia page you linked: Isaac Asimov's Corollary to Clarke's First Law: "When, however, the lay public rallies round an idea that is denounced by distinguished but elderly scientists and supports that idea with great fervour and emotion – the distinguished but elderly scientists are then, after all, probably right."
- pixl97 4y ago
  Why would anyone think that general intelligence is impossible when there are 8 billion copies of it running around currently?
  - dS0rrow 4y ago
    Not achievable with current methods != Impossible

stephc_int13 4y ago

I fully agree. Predicting future events is even more difficult than it seems and we constantly fail. The only thing we can reasonably say about the state of AI is that we are closer to so-called AGI. We're seeing exciting progress and that it turn is attracting more efforts in the field, potentially leading to an acceleration. But we could hit a wall, for many reasons, the field is almost entirely filled by unknown unknowns. Nuclear fusion, Quantum Computing, Nanotech, Genetic Engineering, all of those fields are still evolving, slowly, because of technological and scientifical roadblocks.

mpwouden 4y ago

I think the bigger issue I have is that I think we risk treating them as if they were AGI and that almost then makes them so but with greater risk. It's also a bit of a shifting goal posts in some ways too.

pixl97 4y ago
Where the goal posts are is really undefined. Ask 50 scientists for an exact definition of AGI and you'll get 50 different answers. Because of this we need to some up with sets of well defined measures of increasing capabilities that systems can be said to meet.

titzer 4y ago

I don't know if we're close, but it seems like a lot of people have an implicit assumption that AGI means we created an artificial person. When in reality whatever intelligent things we create in the digital world are not going to behave like people. I mean, an AGI didn't poop its pants in 3rd grade or have a disapproving father or get ridiculed by a bully or a million other things that people normally go through in their lives that lead to their quirky personalities. It's going to be an anti-septically sheltered weirdo with super-human reasoning and a whole lot of unfunny jokes.

mindcrime 4y ago
I don't know if we're close, but it seems like a lot of people have an implicit assumption that AGI means we created an artificial person. When in reality whatever intelligent things we create in the digital world are not going to behave like people. I mean, an AGI didn't poop its pants in 3rd grade or have a disapproving father or get ridiculed by a bully or a million other things that people normally go through in their lives that lead to their quirky personalities. Agreed. In fact, if you go back through my HN comment history (not an exercise I actually suggest mind you) you'll see that I frequently harp on the distinction between "human level" intelligence and "human like" intelligence. Where in my lexicon, those are distinguished largely the absence of actual reference to human experiences like "getting ridiculed by a bully" or "pooping your pants in 3rd grade" in the case of "human level, but not human like" AI. I think not everyone agrees that this distinction is important, or maybe they just haven't spent enough time thinking about the implications. But I believe it is important to call this out and make clear which scenario we're talking about in many (most?) contexts.