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The goalpost keeps moving on what is sufficiently "general" to meet a hypothetical AGI definition. At one point the distinction was more meaningful: AIs were al

The goalpost keeps moving on what is sufficiently "general" to meet a hypothetical AGI definition. At one point the distinction was more meaningful: AIs were always highly domain-specific (eg, playing chess). Now the same transformer model can write a string-parsing JS function, concoct a recipe that uses six arbitrary ingredients, pass a biology exam, sort unstructured data, and give tax advice, but somehow that still isn't general enough to qualify.

joshspankit 3y ago
The lines are fuzzy for sure, but the point is more about public perception instead of actual definition. The issue is really more about the public worrying about an AI being 'conscious' enough to be a threat to humanity (AKA skynet) and LLMs/Diffusion models just can't be that.
- lukifer 3y ago
  I agree there's a strong element of misplaced anthropomorphism. But the issue isn't even that LLMs are (themselves) a threat to humanity, or that we have any reason to think they are "conscious" (in a human, or even animal, sense). The reason for concern is that the emergent behavior we're seeing from a mere token-predictor should give us serious qualms about blindly pursuing the creation of alien intelligences, which are highly capable of unintended consequences precisely because they are neither human, nor conscious.
worrycue 3y ago
IMHO it’s AGI when can do everything humans can and at least do it just as well. It’s a pretty high standard but I feel it’s a “irrefutable” one - if you can find an information processing task that humans can do but the AI can’t or does poorly compared to a human, then it has failed the AGI test. It’s also a useful one in that no one will have a problem with AGI taking over a task if its capabilities matches and exceeds any human’s. Else where should the goalpost be then? Your claim that LLMs have reached AGI is about as valid as someone claiming ELIZA is AGI - in both cases standards are completely arbitrary.
- lukifer 3y ago
  I think human-level intelligence is a useful metric in its own right, but it's not as though humans necessarily hit some arbitrary "general" threshold either (none of us can do tasks that are trivial for computers, like remembering one million digits with perfect fidelity or calculating the millionth digit of pi). I think any goalposts are only useful for answering specific questions: - What practical problems can open-ended intelligence-mimicry solve? - Will solving those problems potentially put humans out of work (and if so is that good, and either way what should be done about that, if anything?) - Might this technology (or its perception) kick off a military arms race? - Can these alien intelligences become clever enough to pursue goals in contraction of human well-being, or even the intent of their creators? The intrinsic "isness" of intelligence categories is about as interesting as "whether a submarine can swim".

joshspankit 3y ago

The lines are fuzzy for sure, but the point is more about public perception instead of actual definition. The issue is really more about the public worrying about an AI being 'conscious' enough to be a threat to humanity (AKA skynet) and LLMs/Diffusion models just can't be that.

lukifer 3y ago
I agree there's a strong element of misplaced anthropomorphism. But the issue isn't even that LLMs are (themselves) a threat to humanity, or that we have any reason to think they are "conscious" (in a human, or even animal, sense). The reason for concern is that the emergent behavior we're seeing from a mere token-predictor should give us serious qualms about blindly pursuing the creation of alien intelligences, which are highly capable of unintended consequences precisely because they are neither human, nor conscious.

worrycue 3y ago

IMHO it’s AGI when can do everything humans can and at least do it just as well. It’s a pretty high standard but I feel it’s a “irrefutable” one - if you can find an information processing task that humans can do but the AI can’t or does poorly compared to a human, then it has failed the AGI test. It’s also a useful one in that no one will have a problem with AGI taking over a task if its capabilities matches and exceeds any human’s. Else where should the goalpost be then? Your claim that LLMs have reached AGI is about as valid as someone claiming ELIZA is AGI - in both cases standards are completely arbitrary.

lukifer 3y ago
I think human-level intelligence is a useful metric in its own right, but it's not as though humans necessarily hit some arbitrary "general" threshold either (none of us can do tasks that are trivial for computers, like remembering one million digits with perfect fidelity or calculating the millionth digit of pi). I think any goalposts are only useful for answering specific questions: - What practical problems can open-ended intelligence-mimicry solve? - Will solving those problems potentially put humans out of work (and if so is that good, and either way what should be done about that, if anything?) - Might this technology (or its perception) kick off a military arms race? - Can these alien intelligences become clever enough to pursue goals in contraction of human well-being, or even the intent of their creators? The intrinsic "isness" of intelligence categories is about as interesting as "whether a submarine can swim".