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I must be missing something. The article claims that $1000 of compute (hardware?) was supposed to surpass an insect brain about 23 years ago, and we hasn't achi

I must be missing something. The article claims that $1000 of compute (hardware?) was supposed to surpass an insect brain about 23 years ago, and we hasn't achieved that benchmark yet. But $1000 of time on Claude Opus will buy 13 million tokens of output, or about 52,000 human hours of output content at typical human author writing rates. The content will be well-formatted, logical, and if well-prompted, virtually indistinguishable from that of an above-average human writer. $1000 on DALLE-3 will generate 8300 images, some fraction of which will pass an artistic turing test. And $1000 on AlphaFold will do things that no human can do. So it seems Kurtweil was right on target, and AI did surpass human capabilities around 2023?

aquilaFiera 2y ago
In both the article and Kurzweil's case, it just depends on how you want to set up the goal posts (which the article somewhat alludes to). If you want to measure flops and compare that way (which is similar to what you're suggesting), sure, we've surpassed human-level intelligence. If you want to measure capabilities like autonomous navigation (like the article does) there is still a ways to go before we have animal-level capabilities. Both discussions have merit. But it's a question of measurements and goal posts.
aabhay 2y ago
Umm.. this is a severe recency bias. What about all the things that humans can do that robots/AI haven’t yet shown promise in at all. Like basically any sculptural art, glass blowing, knot tying, or almost any athletic sport at competitive level like soccer. While you might say “that’s just a hardware problem not an intelligence problem”, you ignore the fact that robotics researchers have been working on this problem for decades and are nowhere near this goal. Even in simulation, we don’t have a compelling mechanism for autonomous completion of a task like driving cross country if it involves fixing a tire. I personally consider the physically embodied tasks extremely challenging for AI because it involves continuous real time sensory integration and extensive nuanced tool use
- robotresearcher 2y ago
  In the small league of RoboCup, games progress faster than humans can really follow, let alone participate in. Those robots are low mass and sensing is done off-board. But it’s real time. Boy, is it.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - aabhay 2y ago
    I am not arguing that humans are better than AI at everything. But if you set the goal post at human-comparison you have to go apples to apples. Even non AI, even a digital calculator is better than every math genius combined at finding the 10 billionth digit of pi.
  - xenocratus 2y ago
    Never heard of this before, but watching a few videos, the difference between small league and standard platform league is shocking, and highlights why the small league seems so impressive. Basically, in the small league the interaction with the real world is as sanitised as possible. It all seems tailored to make it easier to build those robots, so of course they're pretty good at it. > games progress faster than humans can really follow, let alone participate in Call me when Standard Platform League is like that ;)
    - robotresearcher 2y ago
      > It all seems tailored to make it easier to build those robots, so of course they're pretty good at it. They didn't used to be very good at all. There's a lot of achievement you're describing with that 'of course'. Progress was made where progress was available. Of course humans are good at real soccer. We are duration-running social tribal animals with incredibly efficient actuators and energy storage. It seems tailored for us. Robots are good at other things. Edit for footnote: The space of things robots are good at is not very large compared to humans. I've been in the robot business thirty years and watching their ecological niches grow oh-so-slowly.

aquilaFiera 2y ago

In both the article and Kurzweil's case, it just depends on how you want to set up the goal posts (which the article somewhat alludes to). If you want to measure flops and compare that way (which is similar to what you're suggesting), sure, we've surpassed human-level intelligence. If you want to measure capabilities like autonomous navigation (like the article does) there is still a ways to go before we have animal-level capabilities. Both discussions have merit. But it's a question of measurements and goal posts.

aabhay 2y ago

Umm.. this is a severe recency bias. What about all the things that humans can do that robots/AI haven’t yet shown promise in at all. Like basically any sculptural art, glass blowing, knot tying, or almost any athletic sport at competitive level like soccer. While you might say “that’s just a hardware problem not an intelligence problem”, you ignore the fact that robotics researchers have been working on this problem for decades and are nowhere near this goal. Even in simulation, we don’t have a compelling mechanism for autonomous completion of a task like driving cross country if it involves fixing a tire. I personally consider the physically embodied tasks extremely challenging for AI because it involves continuous real time sensory integration and extensive nuanced tool use

robotresearcher 2y ago
In the small league of RoboCup, games progress faster than humans can really follow, let alone participate in. Those robots are low mass and sensing is done off-board. But it’s real time. Boy, is it.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- aabhay 2y ago
  I am not arguing that humans are better than AI at everything. But if you set the goal post at human-comparison you have to go apples to apples. Even non AI, even a digital calculator is better than every math genius combined at finding the 10 billionth digit of pi.
- xenocratus 2y ago
  Never heard of this before, but watching a few videos, the difference between small league and standard platform league is shocking, and highlights why the small league seems so impressive. Basically, in the small league the interaction with the real world is as sanitised as possible. It all seems tailored to make it easier to build those robots, so of course they're pretty good at it. > games progress faster than humans can really follow, let alone participate in Call me when Standard Platform League is like that ;)
  - robotresearcher 2y ago
    > It all seems tailored to make it easier to build those robots, so of course they're pretty good at it. They didn't used to be very good at all. There's a lot of achievement you're describing with that 'of course'. Progress was made where progress was available. Of course humans are good at real soccer. We are duration-running social tribal animals with incredibly efficient actuators and energy storage. It seems tailored for us. Robots are good at other things. Edit for footnote: The space of things robots are good at is not very large compared to humans. I've been in the robot business thirty years and watching their ecological niches grow oh-so-slowly.