> In the absence of solid evidence for the existence of a thing, assuming its nonexistence is the logical position. I disagree very strongly both with this sta

> In the absence of solid evidence for the existence of a thing, assuming its nonexistence is the logical position. I disagree very strongly both with this statement, and the idea that there is no evidence we can create AGI. Absence of evidence is not the same thing as evidence of absence. It would make sense to be skeptical if people were asserting the existence of something for which we have very strong prior beliefs that this thing does not exist. To say that there's an enormous green monster hiding on the back side of Jupiter, for example. Until we've looked at the back of Jupiter, we have no idea what's there, but why would it be enormous, and green? To say that there's life on Jupiter, that's a tougher one -- we could say that we are not sure, but based on our understanding of Jupiter's atmosphere, we think it's unlikely. If we did not know what Jupiter was made of, it would be perfectly reasonable to assume that it might host some sort of life. It would be wrong to assume that because we have no evidence of life there, that there is no life. If we had carefully inspected thousands of planets and never found life, it would be much more reasonable to assume there is no life on Jupiter. This is the whole idea of Bayesian reasoning. But with AGI, it's not like we're searching the universe to see if it exists. There are a ton of smart people actively TRYING TO CREATE IT. The evidence that AGI will happen is what people have already accomplished. We've got goalposts on rails, we've been moving them so much. An AI that understands language, and can respond with perfect grammar, has a theory of mind comparable to a 9-year old, is already mind-blowing, sci-fi tech. And OpenAI is claiming that they have not reached the limit of scalability with bigger models yet. The models we see aren't even the smartest ones -- they're the ones that have been neutered by fine-tuning to be less offensive and less likely to give out dangerous info. To claim that AGI will not happen, you need some very strong evidence that the people actively trying to create it, who believe they can create it, and who have had some massive successes up until this point, will fail. To assume that it won't be created because we haven't seen it yet, doesn't make any sense at all.