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To steal from another comment in the thread: > That’s true for AI, but it is not the right way to think about AGI. For AGI, the bet is that someone will build

To steal from another comment in the thread: > That’s true for AI, but it is not the right way to think about AGI. For AGI, the bet is that someone will build an AI capable enough to automate AI development. Once we get there it will pay for itself. The question is what the cost-speed tradeoff to get there looks like. I don't think people are treating AI as a typical investment. They are valuing it as a potential replacement for like 95% of human workers. Once the plateau becomes obvious to even the biggest fanatics, people are going to realize all this money has been used to create really good chatbots that just make shit up 25% of the time. The whole sales pitch for the last 1-2 years has been that AGI is "just around the corner" and we can get there via the magic of exponential growth.

pulse7 2y ago
"AGI is just around the corner" but we haven't be able to build "fully automatic car driving" for a decade... So first I would like to see car drivers replaced by non-general AI, then I will start believing in AGI...
- entropicdrifter 2y ago
  Waymo's cars are fully automatic self-driving cars, just limited in where they can go. It's entirely possible we could see an AGI develop within a specific medium, e.g. text-only to start. But also, don't you think those two problems are convergent? If we make an algorithm smart enough to drive a car anywhere more safely than a human would, it seems likely to me that that will either be AGI or right on the cusp of it.
  - namaria 2y ago
    The fact that we can't even define what AGI is, or what intelligence is, and yet we are throwing massive amounts of compute and data blindly at this problem... And why? Because chat bots impressed everyone in 2023? The whole thing smells.
    - entropicdrifter 2y ago
      The problem isn't that we can't define intelligence, the problem (IMHO) is that people aren't comfortable of the implications of any given definition. I like to play a game whenever I meet a new group of programmers/lawyers/board gamers/pedants. I ask them to define a sandwich, then I point out all of the edge cases until we get to the point where I can either say their definition is bad because it e.g. doesn't include subs (short for submarine sandwiches), or I can say that poptarts are sandwiches. The problem is that reality is blurry and clear definitions are fundamentally incapable of capturing the nuance there.
- CamperBob2 2y ago
  Automated driving is more a political problem than a technical one. We could make it happen today (and I'm not saying that would be a good thing or a bad one), but it would require leadership we simply don't have. See also standardization of EV battery form factors -- a problem that, had it been tackled by government several years ago, would have avoided the chicken-and-egg problem that is impeding adoption now.
  - pulse7 2y ago
    "We could make it happen today" -> As of today, human drivers make less mistakes than automated driving... and Tesla is promising it for a decade now, but has come to level 2 only (where drivers must hold the steering wheel) and Mercedes has achieved level 3 for highways only... So we are nowhere close to "level 5 on all roads with substantially less mistakes than human drivers"... and that would be just a single part of AGI...
    - CamperBob2 2y ago
      The mistakes made by automated driving usually involve interaction with either human drivers or impaired pedestrians, if you neglect stupid shit like Teslas losing fights with fire trucks because "Cameras Are All You Need." Nonstandard or missing signs and lane markings are close to the top of the list as well. Doing automated driving right means restructuring our entire surface transportation system to support it. I doubt it can happen without a serious commitment from government... which is in no condition to commit to anything.
      - pulse7 2y ago
        But human drivers don't need such restructuring. They can also handle impaired pedestrians, nonstandard and missing signs/lane markings. And if AGI will be "better than most humans at most things" no restructuring should be needed...
        CamperBob2 2y ago
        For values of "They can handle it" equal to about 30,000 deaths a year in the US alone, yeah, I guess they can handle it.
digging 2y ago
> The whole sales pitch for the last 1-2 years has been that AGI is "just around the corner" and we can get there via the magic of exponential growth. I am pretty sure that's less than half the sales pitch. Current LLMs are economically valuable, they are useful to all kinds of knowledge work, despite their flaws.

pulse7 2y ago

"AGI is just around the corner" but we haven't be able to build "fully automatic car driving" for a decade... So first I would like to see car drivers replaced by non-general AI, then I will start believing in AGI...

entropicdrifter 2y ago
Waymo's cars are fully automatic self-driving cars, just limited in where they can go. It's entirely possible we could see an AGI develop within a specific medium, e.g. text-only to start. But also, don't you think those two problems are convergent? If we make an algorithm smart enough to drive a car anywhere more safely than a human would, it seems likely to me that that will either be AGI or right on the cusp of it.
- namaria 2y ago
  The fact that we can't even define what AGI is, or what intelligence is, and yet we are throwing massive amounts of compute and data blindly at this problem... And why? Because chat bots impressed everyone in 2023? The whole thing smells.
  - entropicdrifter 2y ago
    The problem isn't that we can't define intelligence, the problem (IMHO) is that people aren't comfortable of the implications of any given definition. I like to play a game whenever I meet a new group of programmers/lawyers/board gamers/pedants. I ask them to define a sandwich, then I point out all of the edge cases until we get to the point where I can either say their definition is bad because it e.g. doesn't include subs (short for submarine sandwiches), or I can say that poptarts are sandwiches. The problem is that reality is blurry and clear definitions are fundamentally incapable of capturing the nuance there.
CamperBob2 2y ago
Automated driving is more a political problem than a technical one. We could make it happen today (and I'm not saying that would be a good thing or a bad one), but it would require leadership we simply don't have. See also standardization of EV battery form factors -- a problem that, had it been tackled by government several years ago, would have avoided the chicken-and-egg problem that is impeding adoption now.
- pulse7 2y ago
  "We could make it happen today" -> As of today, human drivers make less mistakes than automated driving... and Tesla is promising it for a decade now, but has come to level 2 only (where drivers must hold the steering wheel) and Mercedes has achieved level 3 for highways only... So we are nowhere close to "level 5 on all roads with substantially less mistakes than human drivers"... and that would be just a single part of AGI...
  - CamperBob2 2y ago
    The mistakes made by automated driving usually involve interaction with either human drivers or impaired pedestrians, if you neglect stupid shit like Teslas losing fights with fire trucks because "Cameras Are All You Need." Nonstandard or missing signs and lane markings are close to the top of the list as well. Doing automated driving right means restructuring our entire surface transportation system to support it. I doubt it can happen without a serious commitment from government... which is in no condition to commit to anything.
    - pulse7 2y ago
      But human drivers don't need such restructuring. They can also handle impaired pedestrians, nonstandard and missing signs/lane markings. And if AGI will be "better than most humans at most things" no restructuring should be needed...
      - CamperBob2 2y ago
        For values of "They can handle it" equal to about 30,000 deaths a year in the US alone, yeah, I guess they can handle it.

digging 2y ago

> The whole sales pitch for the last 1-2 years has been that AGI is "just around the corner" and we can get there via the magic of exponential growth. I am pretty sure that's less than half the sales pitch. Current LLMs are economically valuable, they are useful to all kinds of knowledge work, despite their flaws.