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AGI is not possible even in 10 years
- sublinear 10mo ago> The architecture might just be wrong for AGI. LeCun’s been saying this for years: LLMs trained on text prediction are fundamentally limited. They’re mimicking human output without human experience. Yes, and most with a background in linguistics or computer science have been saying the same since the inception of their disciplines. Grammars are sets of rules on symbols and any form of encoding is very restrictive. We haven't come up with anything better yet. The tunnel vision on this topic is so strong that many don't even question language itself first. If we were truly approaching AGI anytime soon, wouldn't there be clearer milestones beforehand? Why must I peck this message out, and why must you scan it with your eyes only for it to become something else entirely once consumed? How is it that I had this message entirely crystalized instantly in my mind, yet it took me several minutes of deliberate attention to serialize it into this form? Clearly, we have an efficiency problem to attack first.
- hackinthebochs 10mo ago>Yes, and most with a background in linguistics or computer science have been saying the same since the inception of their disciplines I'm not sure what authority linguists are supposed to have here. They have gotten approximately nowhere in the last 50 years. "Every time I fire a linguist, the performance of the speech recognizer goes up". >Grammars are sets of rules on symbols and any form of encoding is very restrictive But these rules can be arbitrarily complex. Hand-coded rules have a pretty severe complexity bounds. But LLMs show these are not in principle limitations. I'm not saying theory has nothing to add, but perhaps we should consider the track record when placing our bets.
- sublinear 10mo agoI'm very confused by your comment, but appreciate that you have precisely made my point. There are no "bets" with regard to these topics. How do you think a computer works? Do you seriously believe LLMs somehow escape the limitations of the machines they run on?
- ACCount37 10mo agoAnd what are the limitations of the machines they run on? We're yet to find any process at all that can't be computed with a Turing machine. Why do you expect that "intelligence" is a sudden outlier? Do you have an actual reason to expect that?
- RandomLensman 10mo agoIs everything really just computation? Gravity is (or can be) the result of a Turing machine churning away somewhere?
- ACCount37 10mo agoIt might be. https://xkcd.com/505/ https://xkcd.com/505/
- keernan 10mo ago>We're yet to find any process at all that can't be computed with a Turing machine. Life. Consciousness. A soul. Imagination. Reflection. Emotions.
- ACCount37 10mo agoAgain: why can't any of that run on a sufficiently capable computer? I can't help but perceive this as pseudo-profound bullshit. "Real soul and real imagination cannot run on a computer" is a canned "profound" statement with no substance to it whatsoever. If a hunk of wet meat the size of a melon can do it, then why not a server rack full of nanofabricated silicon?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- keernan 10mo agoFor the same reason you don't sit and talk with rocks. Nobody understands how it is that wet meat can do these things but rocks cannot. And a computer is a rock. As such, we have no idea whether all the hunks of wet meat in the world can figure out how to transform rocks into wet meat.
- ACCount37 10mo agoWhy would language restrict LLMs? "Language" is an input/output interface. It doesn't define the internals that produce those inputs and outputs. And between those inputs and outputs sits a massive computational process that doesn't operate on symbols or words internally. And, what "clearer milestones" do you want exactly? To me, LLMs crushing NLU and CSR was the milestone. It was the "oh fuck" moment, the clear signal that old bets are off and AGI timelines are now compressed.
- AlexandrB 10mo agoLanguage massively restricts LLMs because there's no way to create novel concepts while limited to existing language. Humans create new words and grammatical constructs all the time in the process of building/discovering new things. This is true even in math, where new operators are created to express new operations. Are LLMs even capable of this kind of novelty? There's also the problem that parts of human experience are inexpressible in language. A very basic example is navigating 3D space. This is not something that had to be explained to you as a baby, your brain just learned how to do it. But this problem goes deeper. For instance, intuition about the motion of objects in space. Even before Newton described gravitation every 3 year old still knew that an object that's dropped would fall to the ground a certain way. Formalizing this basic intuition using language took thousands of years of human development and spurred the creation of calculus. An AI does not have these fundamental intuitions nor any way to obtain them. Its conception of the world is only as good as the models and language (both mathematical and spoken) we have to express it.
- ACCount37 10mo ago> Its conception of the world is only as good as the models and language (both mathematical and spoken) we have to express it. Which is pretty damn good, all things considered. And sure, training set text doesn't contain everything - but modern AIs aren't limited to just the training set text. Even in training stage, things like multimodal inputs and RLVR have joined the fray. I don't think "create novel concepts" is a real limitation at all. Nothing prevents an AI from inventing new notations. GPT-4o would often do that when talking to AI psychosis victims.
- danslo 10mo agoThis is slop right? >This isn’t a minor gap; it’s a fundamental limitation. >His timeline? At least a decade, probably much longer. >What does that mean? Simply throwing more computing power and data at current models isn’t working anymore. >His timeline for truly useful agents? About ten years.
- tim333 10mo agoIt has the logical inconsistency of good LLM slop like: "AGI is not possible" combined with "Does this mean AI progress will stall? Absolutely not."
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- dude250711 10mo agoYou can tell by the post history. It's just like with the fake StackOverflow reputation and fake CodeProject articles in the past. Same people at it again but super-charged.
- firmretention 10mo agoYup, clocked it in seconds. There's something especially perverse about reading AI slop waxing poetic about AI slop.
- okaleniuk 10mo agoThe most interesting thing in this whole picture is not AGI, it's how the collective intelligence works. CEOs claim the AGI is near because that's how they manipulate the public. But the public knows that it's only a manipulation. So how come the manipulation is still possible?
- AnimalMuppet 10mo agoBecause "the public" isn't one person or even one cohesive group. Some see the manipulation, and point it out. Others don't see it, or ignore it when it's pointed out. And why ignore it? Because they don't want to believe it's manipulation, because it promises large numbers of dollars, and they want to believe that those are real.
- kubb 10mo agoBots and paid trolls online pushing a narrative. With a whole manual of rhetorical tactics.
- Avicebron 10mo agoSunk cost fallacy? What percentage of the public has actually invested the billions/trillions and is now demanding something to show for it? I'm not sure the average joe wants copilot in their outlook, but sure as hell someone wants it in there
- blkhawk 10mo agobecause people hedge their bets almost always. basically how likely something is vs costs vs what everybody else is doing vs how you are personally affected. So in case of the current AI there are several scenarios where you have to react to it. For example as a CEO of a company that would benefit from AI you need to demonstrate you are doing something or you get attacked for not doing enough. As a CEO of an AI producing company you have almost no idea if the stuff you working on will be the thing that say makes hallucination-free LLMs, allows for cheap long term context integration or even "solve AGI". you have to pretend that you are just about to do the latter tho.
- kayart_dev 10mo agoThis comment can be easily read in Slavoj Žižek’s voice
- RA_Fisher 10mo agoThe paid models are already smarter than the vast majority of people.
- rvnx 10mo agoNot sure why you are being downvoted. Seems like lot of people with high ego are not ready to accept the truth that a human has way less knowledge than a world encyclopedia with infinite and practically perfect memory.
- gambiting 10mo ago>>Seems like lot of people with high ego are not ready to accept the truth that a human has way less knowledge than a world encyclopedia. Well, thank you for editing your own comment and adding that last bit, because it really is the crux of the issue and the reason why OP is being downvoted. Having all of the worlds knowledge is not the same as being smart.
- RA_Fisher 10mo agoSmart is being able to produce knowledge quickly. I’m not sure how it could be denied that AIs are capable of producing knowledge quickly (obviously extremely quickly).
- queenkjuul 10mo agoYou really don't think being smart has anything to do with applying that knowledge? The smartest kid in class was not the one that memorized the most facts.
- AlexandrB 10mo agoKnowledge != Intelligence Otherwise researching intelligence in animals would be a completely futile pursuit since they have no way of "knowing" facts communicated in human language.
- RA_Fisher 10mo ago
- weatherlite 10mo agoAh great more "when will we hit AGI" speculation, lets keep them coming. Some say 2 years, some say 5, some say never.
- charlie-83 10mo agoIt feels like any time scale on AGI is basically just made up. Since no one has any idea of how to get there, how could you possibly estimate how long it will take? We could stumble on some secret technique that unlocks AGI tomorrow or it could be literally impossible. You might as well ask how long until humans can cast magic spells.
- lagniappe 10mo agoWhen you see these claims it's important to frame the assertion contextually as in the transformer generation, AGI is 10+ years away. This does not, however, account for the next architecture that will do more with less.
- FiberBundle 10mo agoThis is inconsistent with people like Hassabis or Sutskever giving time frames while also saying that LLMs won't get us to AGI.
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- Keyframe 10mo agoWe might start by trying to define what AGI exactly is. It's an elusive goal.
- iknowSFR 10mo agoAs every consultant will eventually respond as that conversation sputters: it might be easier for us to define what AGI isn’t.
- coffeebeqn 10mo agoOnce it can extrapolate instead of just interpolate from the training data?
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- vbezhenar 10mo agoWhat a day to be alive, when people arguing if AGI will be possible in the next 10 years or 20 years.
- rvnx 10mo agoIt's plausible, in 2026, we are going to send to Mars fully autonomous humanoid robots, so AGI is right around the corner. https://youtu.be/TsNc4nEX3c4?t=5 https://youtu.be/TsNc4nEX3c4?t=5
- gambiting 10mo agoThis is satire, right? As in, you are being ironic right now?
- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoThey must be! There's not enough Kool aid in the world...
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- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoThat's hilarious. You can tell Elon doesn't even believe it's that close to pull off that little stunt. Fucking with his investors. Hilarious.
- gattilorenz 10mo agoThis has been an argument from the 60s onwards
- rvz 10mo ago"AGI" was hijacked to mean something else and was turned into a scam. What it "really means" is more mass layoffs to power AI infrastructure for that to power so-called "AI agents" to achieve a 10% increase in global unemployment in the next 5 years. From the "benefit of humanity", then to the entire destruction of knowledge workers and now to the tax payer even if it costs another $10T to bailout the industry from staggeringly giant costs to run all of it. Once again, AGI is now nothing but a grift. The crash will be a spectacle for the ages.
- diego_moita 10mo agoI think the best take in AGI is Edsger Dijkstra's: “The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.” I am not interested in computers that have their own intelligence but I do want computers that increase my own intelligence.
- quantum_state 10mo agoWell said!
- grumbelbart2 10mo agoI've read this multiple times and disagree. If I had an AGI that designs me a safe, small and cheap fusion reactor, of course I would be interested in that. My intelligence is intrinsically limited by my biology. The only way to really scale it up is to wire stuff into my brain, and I'd prefer an AGI over that every day.
- diego_moita 10mo agoI get the idea. But if I can't understand how and why the fusion reactor is safe, small and cheap, I wouldn't consider it safe. Very much the same way that I don't take Claude Code's changes to my code without understanding what it does. Augmenting my intelligence is non-negotiable. I want to be in control. It is the classic "trust but verify". And I need my own intelligence to verify.
- ACCount37 10mo agoWhat is the value of you in this system? If an AI is advanced enough to design mass production ready fusion reactors, I can't help but feel that the "human in charge of that AI" quickly becomes fully redundant. There is nothing that human can do that the AI itself can't do faster, better and cheaper.
- diego_moita 10mo ago
- incomingpain 10mo agoAGI has already happened. Grok4 and Gemini 3 Pro top models are around the 125-130IQ range. They are rapidly moving towards ASI.
- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoCan they please do my laundry then?
- incomingpain 10mo agoDoing your laundry is a sign of general intelligence? If someone is a quadriplegic and cant do their own laundry, does that mean they arent intelligent?
- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoMy point is that your example is a one trick pony. An impressive and useful one trick pony, granted. AGI is currently undefined, so any argument about it is meaningless, unless it's in aid of developing a definition. An AI that knows how to do laundry, but is unable to perform said task is useless without the ability. But is it AGI with just the knowledge?
- jagrsw 10mo agoIt's not possible even in 10 years (.. but maybe in 11). What a shift in the last 5 years (never -> 100 years -> 11)
- ACCount37 10mo agoChatGPT has done too many things that "a computer can't do". The "AI effect" denial is strong, but it has its limits.
- Yossarrian22 10mo ago“ Machines will be capable, within twenty years, of doing any work that a man can do.” - Herbert Simon, 1965
- BLKNSLVR 10mo agoWe don't even have an agreed measure for it, that's how far away we are. Is there an RFC being developed for AGI?
- karmakaze 10mo agoOutside of internet debates I don't believe it matters. Much like the discussion of when machines will be treated like people, that's already happening without applying a definition.
- kypro 10mo agoIt seems to me by most classical definitions we've basically already reached AGI. If I were to show Gemini 3 Pro to anyone in tech 10 years ago they would probably say Gemini 3 is an AGI, even if they acknowledged there was some limitations there. The definition has moved so much that I'm not convinced that even if we see further breakthroughs over the next 10 years people will say we've finally reached AGI because even at that point it's probable there might still be 0.5% of tasks it struggles to compete with humans on. And we're going to have similar endless debates about ASI and the consciousness of AI. I think all that matters really is utility of AI systems broadly within society. While a self-driving car may not be an AGI, it will displace jobs and fundamentally change society. The achievement of some technical definition of AGI on the other hand is probably not all that relevant. Even if goal posts stop moving from today and advancements are made such that we finally get 51% of experts agreeing that AGI has been reached there could still be 49% of expert who argue that it hasn't. On the other hand, one will be confused about whether their job has been replaced by an AI system. I'm sorry - I know this is a bit of a meta comment. I do broadly agree with the article. I just struggle to see why anyone cares unless hitting that 51/49% threshold in opinion on AGI correlates to something tangible.
- Shoetp 10mo agoLLMs do NOT have intelligence. Achieving AGI would mean solving self-driving cars, replacing programmers, scientist, etc. All things LLMs are currently unable to do in a way that replaces humans. There's a huge gap between what Gemini 3 can do and what AGI promises to do. It's not just a minor "technical definition".
- arisAlexis 10mo agoAccording to Clarke's First Law, "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
- sublinear 10mo agoWith all due respect to Arthur C. Clarke, I think science education is the only thing standing between us and even bigger scams and absolute chaos in the streets. What is understood by a scientist isn't so far ahead from what the layperson understands these days compared to when Clarke wrote that.
- bryanlarsen 10mo ago[flagged]
- AlexandrB 10mo ago> It's really hard to argue that LLM's don't have intelligence in the way the earthworms do. It's really easy to argue, actually. LLMs have intelligence the way humans online do. An earthworm is highly specialized for what it does and exists in a completely different context - I doubt an LLM would be successful guiding a robotic earthworm around since all it knows about earthworms is what researchers have observed and documented. The actual second-to-second experience of being an earthworm is not accessible as training data to an LLM. Edit: This is true almost by definition. An LLM (Large Language Model) can't have intelligence that's not expressible in language and earthworms are notoriously shy in interviews.
- bryanlarsen 10mo ago[flagged]
- dang 10mo agoCould you please make your substantive points without breaking the site guidelines? They include: "When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. 'That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3' can be shortened to '1 + 1 is 2, not 3." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- bryanlarsen 10mo agoWell past the edit window on this one, so can't fix it now. "Meaningless and fruitless" is a better term. AGI is shorthand for what people are worried about. i.e. The singularity and taking all the jobs. But you don't need perfect AGI for that.
- iJohnDoe 10mo agoSerious question. Do some of the large firms run LLM with no guardrails? I'm guessing they are doing constant research not available to the public. What results have been found? I'm not necessarily saying AGI, but what happens when the systems are not hindered by humans? Also, somewhat related, the model/system that was reported by the Google whistleblower about LaMDA was very interesting for the time, especially considering the transcript. What happens when the guardrails are disabled? Even if it wasn't sentient, it's behavior might be reason for concern.
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 10mo agoI keep reading of an "AI race" but like "AGI" the meaning is unclear, namely the definition of "win", "lose" or "tie" For example, a "space race" might be "won" by the first participant to reach space, or to reach the moon Is it possible to have a "race" without a time limit or a finish line or some way to determine the "winner"
- karmakaze 10mo agoThe winner if there is one will be clear. Making a machine that's as good or better than human at most tasks is the turning point but doesn't demonstrate the win. Applying it for self-improvement making superintelligence which is when the winner will be racing with rockets vs bicycles. I don't know how this will play out--will the second one to achieve it always be behind? It probably depends on the difference in timing and other factors.
- beAbU 10mo agoThe winner will be the one that announces "we have AGI" based on their own definition, and the rest of the world actually agrees with them. The upside of being right is massive, but the downside of prematurely announcing AGI only for the rest of the world to disagree with your definition is probably tremendously large. It's a bit of a catch-22
- rdsubhas 10mo agoThe discourse around AGI feels a lot like what happened with FSD: "If you can't make it, just change the definition" My assumption is AGI will be redefined in a way that it's reached.