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>Anytime I see "Artificial General Intelligence," "AGI," "ASI," etc., I mentally replace it with "something no one has defined meaningfully." There are lots of

>Anytime I see "Artificial General Intelligence," "AGI," "ASI," etc., I mentally replace it with "something no one has defined meaningfully." There are lots of meaningful definitions, the people saying we haven't reached AGI just don't use them. For most of the last half-century people would have agreed that machines that can pass the Turing test and win Math Olympiad gold are AGI.

tokai 7mo ago
Turing test is generally misunderstood, much like Schrodinger's cat, it has devolved in to a pop cultural meme. The test is to evaluate if a machine can think. Not if it is intelligent, not if it is human-like. Its dismissed as a useful by most experts in philosophy of mind, AI, language, etc.. Thinking cool and all but not that extraordinary. Even plants does it.
- namrog84 7mo ago
  I thought that was part of the issue, is the poor understanding of is the test to evaluate if it can think or only if we think it can think. And even that is generalizable since there are different categories of thinking or concepts of the mind.
- runarberg 7mo ago
  I like the analogy with Schrödinger’s cat. Like Schrödinger’s cat it is actually not a good thought experiment. Both have been debunked. Schrödinger’s cat is applying quantum behavior (of a single interaction) to a macro system (with trillions of interactions). While the Turing test can be explained away with Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment. I would argue that Schrödinger’s cat has done more damage to the general understanding of quantum physics then it has done good. In contrary though, I don‘t think the same about the Turing test. I think it has resulted in a net positive for the theory of mind as long as people take Searle’s rebuttal into account. Without it (as is sadly common in popular philosophy) the Turing test is simply just wrong, and offers no good insight for neither philosophy nor science.
  - djoldman 7mo ago
    The Turing test and Searle's "rebuttal" are both pretty inconsequential. There's no real definition of "thinking," therefore neither proof/disprove or say much. Turing's imitation game is about making it difficult for a human to tell whether they are communicating with a computer or not. If a computer can trick the human, then... what? The computer is "thinking" ? I think most people would say that's an insufficient act to prove thinking. Even though no one has a rigorous definition of thinking either. All this stuff goes around in circles and like most philosophy makes little progress.
    - runarberg 7mo ago
      Searle’s rebuttal is actually excellent philosophy. But otherwise I agree. Searle was (just learned he passed away last year) a philosopher by trade, but Turing was a mathematician and Schrödinger was a theoretical physicist. So it is to be expected that a mathematician and a physicist might produce sub-par philosophy. Turing’s point in his 1950 paper was actually to provide a substitute to the question of whether machines could think. If a machine can win the imitation game, he argued, is a better question to ask rather then “can a machine think”. Searle showed that this is in fact this criteria was not a good one. But by 1980 philosophy of mind had advanced significantly, partially thanks to Turing’s contributions, particularly via cognitive science, but in the 1980s we also had neuropsychology, which kind of revolutionized this subfield of philosophy. I think philosophy is actually rather important when formulating questions like these, and even more so when evaluating the quality of the answers. That said, I am not the biggest fan of the state of mainstream philosophy in the 1940s. I kind of have a beef with logical positivism, and honestly believe that even Turing’s mediocre philosophy was on a much better track then what the biggest thinkers of the time were doing with their operational definition.
      - Dylan16807 7mo ago
        Even if a Chinese room isn't a real boy, if it can do basically all text tasks at a human level I'm going to say it's capable of thinking. The issue of "understanding" can be left for another day (not that I think the Chinese room is very convincing on that front either). I see no reason to disqualify p-zombies from being AGI.
- debugnik 7mo ago
  > The test is to evaluate if a machine can think. The test is to showcase that the question of whether machines can think is meaningless. The point of Turing's thesis is that passing his test just proves the machine has the capability to pass such a test, which is actually meaningful.
- hunterpayne 7mo ago
  "Thinking cool and all but not that extraordinary. Even plants does it." Are you involved in politics somehow?
sebastos 7mo ago
Firstly, the models that pass the Math Olympiad aren’t the same models as the ones you’re saying “pass the Turing test”. Secondly, nothing actually passes the Turing test. They pass a vibes check of “hey that’s pretty good!” but if your life depended on it, you could easily find ways to sniff out an LLM agent. Thirdly, none of these models learn in real time, which is an obviously essential feature. We’ll know AGI when we see it, and this ain’t it. This complaining about changing goalposts is so transparently sour grapes from people over-invested in hyping the current LLM paradigm.
- ufmace 7mo ago
  > nothing actually passes the Turing test Says who? I had already found this study, published almost a year ago, saying that they do: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 There doesn't seem to be a super-rigorous definition of the Turing Test, but I don't think it's reasonable to require it to fool an expert whose life depends on the correct choice. It already seems to be decently able to fool a person of average intelligence who has a basic knowledge of LLMs. I agree that we don't really have AGI yet, but I'd hope we can come up with a better definition of what it is than "we'll know it when we see it". I think it is a legitimate point that we've moved the goalposts some.
  - edanm 7mo ago
    Turing gave a pretty rigorous definition of the Turing Test IMO. Well, as rigorous as something that is inherently "anecdotal" can be, which is part of the philosophical point of the Turing Test.
  - Copyrightest 7mo ago
    [dead]
  - runarberg 7mo ago
    First of. The Turing test has a rigorous definition. Secondly, it has been debunked for almost half a century at this point by Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment. Thirdly, intelligence it self is a scientifically fraught term with ever changing meaning as we discover more and more “intelligent” behavior in nature (by animals and plants, and more). And to make matters worse, general intelligence is even worse, as the term was used almost exclusively for racist pseudo-science, as a way to operationally define a metric which would prove white supremacy. Artificial General Intelligence will exist when the grifters who profit from it claim it exists. The meaning of it will shift to benefit certain entrepreneurs. It will never actually be a useful term in science nor philosophy.
orbital-decay 7mo ago
The most pragmatic definition I know is OpenAI's own: "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". Which is still something between skippetyboop and zingybang, as it leaves a ton of room for OAI to decide if that moment is reached, and also economically valuable work is a moving target.
b00ty4breakfast 7mo ago
If fooling people and doing math good are the criteria, we've had AGI for longer than we've had the modern internet.

tokai 7mo ago

Turing test is generally misunderstood, much like Schrodinger's cat, it has devolved in to a pop cultural meme. The test is to evaluate if a machine can think. Not if it is intelligent, not if it is human-like. Its dismissed as a useful by most experts in philosophy of mind, AI, language, etc.. Thinking cool and all but not that extraordinary. Even plants does it.

namrog84 7mo ago
I thought that was part of the issue, is the poor understanding of is the test to evaluate if it can think or only if we think it can think. And even that is generalizable since there are different categories of thinking or concepts of the mind.
runarberg 7mo ago
I like the analogy with Schrödinger’s cat. Like Schrödinger’s cat it is actually not a good thought experiment. Both have been debunked. Schrödinger’s cat is applying quantum behavior (of a single interaction) to a macro system (with trillions of interactions). While the Turing test can be explained away with Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment. I would argue that Schrödinger’s cat has done more damage to the general understanding of quantum physics then it has done good. In contrary though, I don‘t think the same about the Turing test. I think it has resulted in a net positive for the theory of mind as long as people take Searle’s rebuttal into account. Without it (as is sadly common in popular philosophy) the Turing test is simply just wrong, and offers no good insight for neither philosophy nor science.
- djoldman 7mo ago
  The Turing test and Searle's "rebuttal" are both pretty inconsequential. There's no real definition of "thinking," therefore neither proof/disprove or say much. Turing's imitation game is about making it difficult for a human to tell whether they are communicating with a computer or not. If a computer can trick the human, then... what? The computer is "thinking" ? I think most people would say that's an insufficient act to prove thinking. Even though no one has a rigorous definition of thinking either. All this stuff goes around in circles and like most philosophy makes little progress.
  - runarberg 7mo ago
    Searle’s rebuttal is actually excellent philosophy. But otherwise I agree. Searle was (just learned he passed away last year) a philosopher by trade, but Turing was a mathematician and Schrödinger was a theoretical physicist. So it is to be expected that a mathematician and a physicist might produce sub-par philosophy. Turing’s point in his 1950 paper was actually to provide a substitute to the question of whether machines could think. If a machine can win the imitation game, he argued, is a better question to ask rather then “can a machine think”. Searle showed that this is in fact this criteria was not a good one. But by 1980 philosophy of mind had advanced significantly, partially thanks to Turing’s contributions, particularly via cognitive science, but in the 1980s we also had neuropsychology, which kind of revolutionized this subfield of philosophy. I think philosophy is actually rather important when formulating questions like these, and even more so when evaluating the quality of the answers. That said, I am not the biggest fan of the state of mainstream philosophy in the 1940s. I kind of have a beef with logical positivism, and honestly believe that even Turing’s mediocre philosophy was on a much better track then what the biggest thinkers of the time were doing with their operational definition.
    - Dylan16807 7mo ago
      Even if a Chinese room isn't a real boy, if it can do basically all text tasks at a human level I'm going to say it's capable of thinking. The issue of "understanding" can be left for another day (not that I think the Chinese room is very convincing on that front either). I see no reason to disqualify p-zombies from being AGI.
debugnik 7mo ago
> The test is to evaluate if a machine can think. The test is to showcase that the question of whether machines can think is meaningless. The point of Turing's thesis is that passing his test just proves the machine has the capability to pass such a test, which is actually meaningful.
hunterpayne 7mo ago
"Thinking cool and all but not that extraordinary. Even plants does it." Are you involved in politics somehow?

sebastos 7mo ago

Firstly, the models that pass the Math Olympiad aren’t the same models as the ones you’re saying “pass the Turing test”. Secondly, nothing actually passes the Turing test. They pass a vibes check of “hey that’s pretty good!” but if your life depended on it, you could easily find ways to sniff out an LLM agent. Thirdly, none of these models learn in real time, which is an obviously essential feature. We’ll know AGI when we see it, and this ain’t it. This complaining about changing goalposts is so transparently sour grapes from people over-invested in hyping the current LLM paradigm.

ufmace 7mo ago
> nothing actually passes the Turing test Says who? I had already found this study, published almost a year ago, saying that they do: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.23674 There doesn't seem to be a super-rigorous definition of the Turing Test, but I don't think it's reasonable to require it to fool an expert whose life depends on the correct choice. It already seems to be decently able to fool a person of average intelligence who has a basic knowledge of LLMs. I agree that we don't really have AGI yet, but I'd hope we can come up with a better definition of what it is than "we'll know it when we see it". I think it is a legitimate point that we've moved the goalposts some.
- edanm 7mo ago
  Turing gave a pretty rigorous definition of the Turing Test IMO. Well, as rigorous as something that is inherently "anecdotal" can be, which is part of the philosophical point of the Turing Test.
- Copyrightest 7mo ago
  [dead]
- runarberg 7mo ago
  First of. The Turing test has a rigorous definition. Secondly, it has been debunked for almost half a century at this point by Searle’s Chinese room thought experiment. Thirdly, intelligence it self is a scientifically fraught term with ever changing meaning as we discover more and more “intelligent” behavior in nature (by animals and plants, and more). And to make matters worse, general intelligence is even worse, as the term was used almost exclusively for racist pseudo-science, as a way to operationally define a metric which would prove white supremacy. Artificial General Intelligence will exist when the grifters who profit from it claim it exists. The meaning of it will shift to benefit certain entrepreneurs. It will never actually be a useful term in science nor philosophy.

orbital-decay 7mo ago

The most pragmatic definition I know is OpenAI's own: "highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work". Which is still something between skippetyboop and zingybang, as it leaves a ton of room for OAI to decide if that moment is reached, and also economically valuable work is a moving target.

b00ty4breakfast 7mo ago

If fooling people and doing math good are the criteria, we've had AGI for longer than we've had the modern internet.