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We don't even know if AGI is possible. Let's not mince words here: nothing, and I do mean nothing, not a single, solitary model on offer by anyone, anywhere, ri

We don't even know if AGI is possible. Let's not mince words here: nothing, and I do mean nothing, not a single, solitary model on offer by anyone, anywhere, right now has a prayer of becoming AGI. That's just... not how it's going to be done. What we have right now are fantastically powerful, interesting, and neato to play with pattern recognition programs, that can take their understanding of patterns, and reproduce more of them given prompts. That's it. That is not general intelligence of any sort, it's not even really creative, it's analogous to creative output but it isn't outputting to say something, it's simply taking samples of all the things it's seen previously and making something new with as few "errors" as possible, whatever that means in context. This is not intelligence of any sort, period, paragraph. I don't know to what extent OpenAI and their compatriots are actually trying to bring forth artificial life (or at least, consciousness) forward, versus how much they're just banking on how cool AI is as a term in order to funnel even more money to themselves chasing the pipe dream of building it, and at this point, I don't care. Even the products they have made do not hold a candle to the things they claim to be trying to make, but they're more than happy to talk them up like there's a chance. And I suppose there is a chance, but I really struggle to see ChatGPT turning into skynet.

mitthrowaway2 3y ago
> We don't even know if AGI is possible. My response to a very similar statement is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39612641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39612641 > That's just... not how it's going to be done. I agree. I think there are some critical ingredients missing. Obviously the weights need to be able to update to new data in a semi-online fashion, for example. But I think there are less ingredients missing than there were a decade ago, by a much larger factor than I expected at the time, and a decade from now, the number of missing ingredients might be zero. My uncertainty on this is not because I think GPT is more than it seems,but because it's unclear how much of the amazing cognitive capability that humans have is, under the hood, much simpler than it seems. I really want humanity to exist even ten decades from now; I want my kids to have grandkids. So I care about this even if I don't expect AGI from a 2025 Q1 product launch. And I don't think it's too early to worry about it, just like I don't think 1980 was too early to worry about climate change.
- ToucanLoucan 3y ago
  > Reading this is like hearing "there is no evidence that heavier-than-air flight is even possible" being spoken, by a bird. This is a vivid bit of rhetoric to underscore this point, but if you think about it for any length of time it starts to fall apart really, really quickly. The Wright brothers and the dozens if not hundreds of inventors forgotten who came before them drew upon the physics of what they observed in heavier than air flight to create the winged shape we know today that reliably causes lift, and then set about constructing it. That's not what OpenAI is doing. We still do not have a very solid understanding of where our own intelligence emerges from, apart from having particularly large brains relative to our body's size. So, to borrow your metaphor, it is indeed like a bird saying that there's no evidence to say that heavier than air flight is possible, because the bird lives in a world without atmosphere upon which to glide.
  - mitthrowaway2 3y ago
    Maybe by "we don't know if it's possible" you meant "we don't presently have a step-by-step plan to implement AGI using the tools we already have in our toolbox, and no new ones"? If so then I certainly agree. But when you look at, say, Sora's videos... How certain are you that there's no path between that and the human visual cortex? How certain are you that they aren't solving at least some of the same problems in structurally analogous ways? Given that nature built a visual cortex (more than once!) by applying survival pressure and turning a crank, just how hard can it be? When we apply a bunch of optimization pressure and billions of dollars turning cranks and something eerily similar pops out, that tells me that there's just less magic to our own brain than we thought. Like when spent centuries wondering if our solar system is unique, and then we finally put Kepler up there and it turns out that planets are everywhere you look.
ben_w 3y ago
> We don't even know if AGI is possible. Sure we do: we're made of atoms. To reject that this necessarily shows that AGI is possible, you would have to demonstrate human intelligence is tied to an immaterial soul granted by a supernatural being. Some people do in fact believe this. I think that if we can't build AGI even with a perfect copy of a brain, that would instead be a surprising proof the existence of souls. > This is not intelligence of any sort, period, paragraph. Let's run with that. Just using your definition of intelligence: given AI can already beat us in Chess, in Go, in Mathematical Olympiad puzzles, in protein folding predictions, in poker, at real world stock market analysis, in the game of Diplomacy, … — does it matter that they're not what you call intelligent? Do submarines swim? > bring forth artificial life (or at least, consciousness) forward Why does it matter if it's "life" or "consciousness"? “Deep Blue was intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. Not that losing to a $10 million alarm clock made me feel any better.” ― Garry Kasparov
- mistermann 3y ago
  > Sure we do: we're made of atoms. > To reject that this necessarily shows that AGI is possible... Incorrect. For something to be possible in an absolute sense, it has to be possible in both the physical and the metaphysical realm, and a lack of knowledge of blockers in the metaphysical does not mean that there are none (in a comprehensive sense), it only means it appears that way, due to (at least) our cultural beliefs ("truths") and conditioning. > ...you would have to demonstrate human intelligence is tied to an immaterial soul granted by a supernatural being. Could demonstrating that intelligence rests upon a virtual reality generation machine (that cloaks itself from being realized as such) or something else not also work, at least maybe?

mitthrowaway2 3y ago

> We don't even know if AGI is possible. My response to a very similar statement is here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39612641 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39612641 > That's just... not how it's going to be done. I agree. I think there are some critical ingredients missing. Obviously the weights need to be able to update to new data in a semi-online fashion, for example. But I think there are less ingredients missing than there were a decade ago, by a much larger factor than I expected at the time, and a decade from now, the number of missing ingredients might be zero. My uncertainty on this is not because I think GPT is more than it seems,but because it's unclear how much of the amazing cognitive capability that humans have is, under the hood, much simpler than it seems. I really want humanity to exist even ten decades from now; I want my kids to have grandkids. So I care about this even if I don't expect AGI from a 2025 Q1 product launch. And I don't think it's too early to worry about it, just like I don't think 1980 was too early to worry about climate change.

ToucanLoucan 3y ago
> Reading this is like hearing "there is no evidence that heavier-than-air flight is even possible" being spoken, by a bird. This is a vivid bit of rhetoric to underscore this point, but if you think about it for any length of time it starts to fall apart really, really quickly. The Wright brothers and the dozens if not hundreds of inventors forgotten who came before them drew upon the physics of what they observed in heavier than air flight to create the winged shape we know today that reliably causes lift, and then set about constructing it. That's not what OpenAI is doing. We still do not have a very solid understanding of where our own intelligence emerges from, apart from having particularly large brains relative to our body's size. So, to borrow your metaphor, it is indeed like a bird saying that there's no evidence to say that heavier than air flight is possible, because the bird lives in a world without atmosphere upon which to glide.
- mitthrowaway2 3y ago
  Maybe by "we don't know if it's possible" you meant "we don't presently have a step-by-step plan to implement AGI using the tools we already have in our toolbox, and no new ones"? If so then I certainly agree. But when you look at, say, Sora's videos... How certain are you that there's no path between that and the human visual cortex? How certain are you that they aren't solving at least some of the same problems in structurally analogous ways? Given that nature built a visual cortex (more than once!) by applying survival pressure and turning a crank, just how hard can it be? When we apply a bunch of optimization pressure and billions of dollars turning cranks and something eerily similar pops out, that tells me that there's just less magic to our own brain than we thought. Like when spent centuries wondering if our solar system is unique, and then we finally put Kepler up there and it turns out that planets are everywhere you look.

ben_w 3y ago

> We don't even know if AGI is possible. Sure we do: we're made of atoms. To reject that this necessarily shows that AGI is possible, you would have to demonstrate human intelligence is tied to an immaterial soul granted by a supernatural being. Some people do in fact believe this. I think that if we can't build AGI even with a perfect copy of a brain, that would instead be a surprising proof the existence of souls. > This is not intelligence of any sort, period, paragraph. Let's run with that. Just using your definition of intelligence: given AI can already beat us in Chess, in Go, in Mathematical Olympiad puzzles, in protein folding predictions, in poker, at real world stock market analysis, in the game of Diplomacy, … — does it matter that they're not what you call intelligent? Do submarines swim? > bring forth artificial life (or at least, consciousness) forward Why does it matter if it's "life" or "consciousness"? “Deep Blue was intelligent the way your programmable alarm clock is intelligent. Not that losing to a $10 million alarm clock made me feel any better.” ― Garry Kasparov

mistermann 3y ago
> Sure we do: we're made of atoms. > To reject that this necessarily shows that AGI is possible... Incorrect. For something to be possible in an absolute sense, it has to be possible in both the physical and the metaphysical realm, and a lack of knowledge of blockers in the metaphysical does not mean that there are none (in a comprehensive sense), it only means it appears that way, due to (at least) our cultural beliefs ("truths") and conditioning. > ...you would have to demonstrate human intelligence is tied to an immaterial soul granted by a supernatural being. Could demonstrating that intelligence rests upon a virtual reality generation machine (that cloaks itself from being realized as such) or something else not also work, at least maybe?