>> The belief that we can get to AGI comes off as religion to me. It is a substitute for something we can’t really understand, and it will continue to shift the

>> The belief that we can get to AGI comes off as religion to me. It is a substitute for something we can’t really understand, and it will continue to shift the more we learn, yet always remain out of reach. There will be some true believers, and some people simply gunning for power. > As a counterpoint, I feel like the belief that we can't get to AGI comes off as religion. It presupposes an ineffable quality that we posses that machines cannot. That's missing the point: the argument isn't that it's theoretically impossible to build an AGI, just that humans are incapable of it. Here's another point for the belief in AGI being a religion: it's basically a sect of the larger religion of technological progress, which (likely falsely) assumes that technology will continue to "advance" at approximately current rates until we live in a world out of a sci-fi paperback. A lot of people believe that, but frequently resort to a motte-and-bailey fallacy when challenged. > It's always hard to predict the rate of progress, Most of the current optimism comes from how radically wrong predictions were for the capabilities of AI today. 10 years ago a lot of people would have put current AI capability as arriving well after 2050. The jump in progress may not be sustained, but it definitely places doubt on people confidently predicting slow progress. It's worth noting that "the current optimism" is not without precedent. IIRC, there was a big boom in AI in the 70s/80s. SHRDLU was pretty impressive. But then then the promising ideas were found to be dead ends and there was a long winter.