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This isn't possible without being able to identify an AGI, which we are completely unable to do. That's one of the great open questions, and we've spent ~3,000

This isn't possible without being able to identify an AGI, which we are completely unable to do. That's one of the great open questions, and we've spent ~3,000 years on it. Without a definition, you can't say if we're remotely close.

swatcoder 3y ago
Saying we spent 3000 years on it a stretch. The modern concept of intelligence is itself barely two hundred years old [1]. Trying to see how it might apply to a machine is really just a bit of poetic exercise and language development. We’re already at a point where some people will start staunchly attributing AGI to extant technology and others will disagree, and the tides will shift in favor of the former as technology further develops and the (themselves very modern) traditionalists tire of fighting about it. You’re thinking about the question scientifically, but neither language or culture work that way. There is very likely to be a broad but loudly disputed consensus that “AGI has arrived” within the next few decades, regardless of what more the technology can actually do. Academics will be writing about it as such, corporations will be asserting as such, legislatures will be codifying it as such, budding pseudo-religious movements will be vaunting it as such, and the many old cynics like you and me will just be saying “WTF?!” before resigning ourselves to watching Seinfeld reruns and feeding birds in our own private peace. [1] Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychology found its language.
gaganyaan 3y ago
So what definition of AGI (N.B. not superintelligence) excludes GPT-4? It's good at a wide range of tasks without being specifically trained on those tasks. It's pretty dumb at some tasks, but aren't we all? Serious question. I think we've invented AGI, but that term is now useless and we need to come up with better terms such as superintelligence, or maybe a numeric scale.

swatcoder 3y ago

Saying we spent 3000 years on it a stretch. The modern concept of intelligence is itself barely two hundred years old [1]. Trying to see how it might apply to a machine is really just a bit of poetic exercise and language development. We’re already at a point where some people will start staunchly attributing AGI to extant technology and others will disagree, and the tides will shift in favor of the former as technology further develops and the (themselves very modern) traditionalists tire of fighting about it. You’re thinking about the question scientifically, but neither language or culture work that way. There is very likely to be a broad but loudly disputed consensus that “AGI has arrived” within the next few decades, regardless of what more the technology can actually do. Academics will be writing about it as such, corporations will be asserting as such, legislatures will be codifying it as such, budding pseudo-religious movements will be vaunting it as such, and the many old cynics like you and me will just be saying “WTF?!” before resigning ourselves to watching Seinfeld reruns and feeding birds in our own private peace. [1] Danziger, K. (1997). Naming the mind: How psychology found its language.

gaganyaan 3y ago

So what definition of AGI (N.B. not superintelligence) excludes GPT-4? It's good at a wide range of tasks without being specifically trained on those tasks. It's pretty dumb at some tasks, but aren't we all? Serious question. I think we've invented AGI, but that term is now useless and we need to come up with better terms such as superintelligence, or maybe a numeric scale.