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Is this ability really a prerequisite to AGI and ASI? Reasoning, problem solving, research validation - at the fundamental outset it is all refinement thinking

Is this ability really a prerequisite to AGI and ASI? Reasoning, problem solving, research validation - at the fundamental outset it is all refinement thinking. Research is one of those areas where I remain skeptical it is that important because the only valid proof is in the execution outcome, not the compiled answer. For instance you can research all you want about the best vacuum on the internet but until you try it out yourself you are going to be caught in between marketing, fake reviews, influencers, etc. maybe the science fields are shielded from this (by being boring) but imagine medical pharmas realizing that they can get whatever paper to say whatever by flooding the internet with their curated blog articles containing advanced medical “research findings”. At some point you cannot trust the internet at all and I imagine that might be soon. I worry especially with the rapidly changing landscape of the amount of generated text in the internet that research will lose a lot of value due to massive amounts of information garbage. It will be a thing we used to do when the internet was still “real”.

simonw 2y ago
> Is this ability really a prerequisite to AGI and ASI? That depends entirely on how you choose to define "AGI".
observationist 2y ago
It's a direction in a vast landscape, not a feature of itself - being better at different tasks, like search generally, and research in conjunction with reasoning, gets the model closer to AGI. An AGI will be able to do these tasks - so the point of the research is to have more Venn diagrams of capabilities like these to help narrow down the view on things that might actually be fundamental mechanisms involved in AGI. Moravec detailed the idea of a landscape of human capabilities slowly being submerged by AI capabilities, and the point at which AI can do anything a human can, in practice or in principle, we'll know for certain we've reached truly general AI. This idea includes things like feeling pain and pleasure, planning, complex social, oral, and ethical dynamics, and anything else you can possibly think of as relevant to human intelligence. Deep Research is just another island being slowly submerged by the relentless and relentlessly accelerating flood.
- numba888 2y ago
  > hings like feeling pain and pleasure can machine feel? without that there is no AGI according to definition above. and the second question: are animals "GI"? they don't have language and don't solve math problems, never heard of np-complete.
  - xwolfi 2y ago
    Are we not machines anyway ? Ofc a machine can feel, just need to have priorities that are aligned to itself, and use strong feedback when that self is either in danger or on the right path to preservation... Feelings are nothing very special you know...
BeetleB 2y ago
> For instance you can research all you want about the best vacuum on the internet but until you try it out yourself you are going to be caught in between marketing, fake reviews, influencers, etc. So you wouldn't use this tool for those types of use cases. But still, a valid point. I recall I once wanted to compare Hydroflask, Klean Kanteen and Thermos to see how they perform for hot/cold drinks. I was looking specifically for articles/posts where people had performed actual measurements. But those were very hard to find, with almost all Google hits being generic comparisons with no hard data. That didn't stop them from ranking ("Hydroflask is better for warm drinks!") Would I be able to get this to ignore all of those and use only ones where actual experiments were performed. And moreover, filter out duplicates (e.g. one guy does an experiment, and several other bloggers link to his post and repeat his findings in their own posts - it's one experiment but with many search results).

simonw 2y ago

> Is this ability really a prerequisite to AGI and ASI? That depends entirely on how you choose to define "AGI".

observationist 2y ago

It's a direction in a vast landscape, not a feature of itself - being better at different tasks, like search generally, and research in conjunction with reasoning, gets the model closer to AGI. An AGI will be able to do these tasks - so the point of the research is to have more Venn diagrams of capabilities like these to help narrow down the view on things that might actually be fundamental mechanisms involved in AGI. Moravec detailed the idea of a landscape of human capabilities slowly being submerged by AI capabilities, and the point at which AI can do anything a human can, in practice or in principle, we'll know for certain we've reached truly general AI. This idea includes things like feeling pain and pleasure, planning, complex social, oral, and ethical dynamics, and anything else you can possibly think of as relevant to human intelligence. Deep Research is just another island being slowly submerged by the relentless and relentlessly accelerating flood.

numba888 2y ago
> hings like feeling pain and pleasure can machine feel? without that there is no AGI according to definition above. and the second question: are animals "GI"? they don't have language and don't solve math problems, never heard of np-complete.
- xwolfi 2y ago
  Are we not machines anyway ? Ofc a machine can feel, just need to have priorities that are aligned to itself, and use strong feedback when that self is either in danger or on the right path to preservation... Feelings are nothing very special you know...

BeetleB 2y ago

> For instance you can research all you want about the best vacuum on the internet but until you try it out yourself you are going to be caught in between marketing, fake reviews, influencers, etc. So you wouldn't use this tool for those types of use cases. But still, a valid point. I recall I once wanted to compare Hydroflask, Klean Kanteen and Thermos to see how they perform for hot/cold drinks. I was looking specifically for articles/posts where people had performed actual measurements. But those were very hard to find, with almost all Google hits being generic comparisons with no hard data. That didn't stop them from ranking ("Hydroflask is better for warm drinks!") Would I be able to get this to ignore all of those and use only ones where actual experiments were performed. And moreover, filter out duplicates (e.g. one guy does an experiment, and several other bloggers link to his post and repeat his findings in their own posts - it's one experiment but with many search results).