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> To me, all the arguments against AGI appear unconvincing, motivated by religion/faith, or based on definitional sophistry. Correction. I'm atheist. I don't s

> To me, all the arguments against AGI appear unconvincing, motivated by religion/faith, or based on definitional sophistry. Correction. I'm atheist. I don't see AGI for the future. Same reasons as the poster who responded to you below: evolution may not have had a design, but we know it works well on animated creatures. We have yet to see any examples of inanimate objects exhibiting any sign of intelligence, or even instinct. What we do know is that, even after billions of years of evolution, not a single rock has evolved to exhibit a sign of intelligence. You're saying that with an intelligent hand directing the process, we can do better. I understand the argument, and I concede that it is a reasonable argument to make, I'm just unconvinced by it.

myrmidon 3y ago
> We have yet to see any examples of inanimate objects exhibiting any sign of intelligence, or even instinct. Can you give me a clear, minimal definition for both "intelligence" and "instinct"? Because to me, instinct seems to be already achieved by existing inanimate control systems for decades now, and "decent understanding of natural human language" (as achieved by todays LLMs) is more than enough to count as intelligent for me. If we just started simulating neurons in a brain exactly, what would prevent us from achieving inorganic intelligence in your view?
- lelanthran 3y ago
  I don't really want to get involved in a discussion on where the fine dividing line is between intelligence and non-intelligence. We are fine determining intelligence at the extremes, but not in the large shades of grey in-between. Most people (say, 999999 out of every 1000000) will consider a rock unintelligent and Stephen hawking to be intelligent. You can't call them wrong because "they cannot define intelligence". > If we just started simulating neurons in a brain exactly, what would prevent us from achieving inorganic intelligence in your view? Nothing. But the word "If" is doing all the heavy lifting in that argument. I mean, we aren't doing that at the moment, are we? It's not clear that we might ever discover exactly how the collection of neurons we call a brain "exactly works". IOW, if the human brain was simpler, we'd be too simple to understand it: this may already be the case! And the evidence for "we may not figure out how the brain works exactly enough to clone the mechanism it uses" is a lot larger than "we might figure out how the brain works well enough to clone the mechanism it uses." This is why I remain unconvinced. Even though I think your position is a reasonable one to hold, the opposite position is, IMHO, just as reasonable. It's got nothing to do with religion or superstition.
Windchaser 3y ago
"What we do know is that, even after billions of years of evolution, not a single rock has evolved to exhibit a sign of intelligence." Is it even appropriate to apply "after billions of years of evolution" to rocks? Rocks don't evolve. Evolution can't act on them. And, we aren't generally looking to "evolve" AI, so it's kinda a moot point there, too. What is it about animation that, to you, is important for intelligence? Presumably it's the training data + agency, but.. are these not possible without physical-world "animation"? But also: how come AI can't be animated?

myrmidon 3y ago

> We have yet to see any examples of inanimate objects exhibiting any sign of intelligence, or even instinct. Can you give me a clear, minimal definition for both "intelligence" and "instinct"? Because to me, instinct seems to be already achieved by existing inanimate control systems for decades now, and "decent understanding of natural human language" (as achieved by todays LLMs) is more than enough to count as intelligent for me. If we just started simulating neurons in a brain exactly, what would prevent us from achieving inorganic intelligence in your view?

lelanthran 3y ago
I don't really want to get involved in a discussion on where the fine dividing line is between intelligence and non-intelligence. We are fine determining intelligence at the extremes, but not in the large shades of grey in-between. Most people (say, 999999 out of every 1000000) will consider a rock unintelligent and Stephen hawking to be intelligent. You can't call them wrong because "they cannot define intelligence". > If we just started simulating neurons in a brain exactly, what would prevent us from achieving inorganic intelligence in your view? Nothing. But the word "If" is doing all the heavy lifting in that argument. I mean, we aren't doing that at the moment, are we? It's not clear that we might ever discover exactly how the collection of neurons we call a brain "exactly works". IOW, if the human brain was simpler, we'd be too simple to understand it: this may already be the case! And the evidence for "we may not figure out how the brain works exactly enough to clone the mechanism it uses" is a lot larger than "we might figure out how the brain works well enough to clone the mechanism it uses." This is why I remain unconvinced. Even though I think your position is a reasonable one to hold, the opposite position is, IMHO, just as reasonable. It's got nothing to do with religion or superstition.

Windchaser 3y ago

"What we do know is that, even after billions of years of evolution, not a single rock has evolved to exhibit a sign of intelligence." Is it even appropriate to apply "after billions of years of evolution" to rocks? Rocks don't evolve. Evolution can't act on them. And, we aren't generally looking to "evolve" AI, so it's kinda a moot point there, too. What is it about animation that, to you, is important for intelligence? Presumably it's the training data + agency, but.. are these not possible without physical-world "animation"? But also: how come AI can't be animated?