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They define AGI in their charter > artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically

They define AGI in their charter > artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work

chrsw 7mo ago
I take "outperform" to mean "can replace".
djoldman 7mo ago
That definition is as I said: "something about which no conclusions can be drawn because the proposed definitions lack sufficient precision and completeness." "Highly autonomous systems" and "most economically valuable work" aren't precise enough to be useful. "Highly" implies that there is a continuum, so where does directed end and autonomy begin? "Most economically valuable work"... each word in that has wiggle room, not to mention that any reasonable interpretation of it is a shifting goalpost as the work done by humans over history has shifted a great deal. The point is that none of this is defined in a way so that people can agree that something has AGI/ASI/etc. or not. If people can't agree then there's no point in talking about it. EDIT: interestingly, the OpenAI definition of AGI specifically means that a subset of humans do not have AGI.
- nomel 7mo ago
  It's a definition based on practical results. That's a good definition, because it doesn't require we already know the exact implementation. It doesn't require guessing, in a literal "put your money where your mouth is" way. If it can do things as good as or better than humans, then either the AI has a type of general intelligence or the human does not. Defining capabilities based on outcome rather than implementation should be very familiar to an engineer, of any kind, because that's how every unsolved implementation must start.
  - irishcoffee 7mo ago
    Do you know how an LLM works? Can you describe it?
    - nomel 7mo ago
      Sorry, what do current LLM architectures have to do with this? It should be extremely clear to you that current LLM don't fit this definition. If they did, we wouldn't be having this conversation!!!!
    - esafak 7mo ago
      Do you know how the human brain works? That science is still in its infancy but that's not stopped us.
      - godelski 7mo ago
        > Do you know how the human brain works? To what degree of accuracy? Depending on how you answer I might answer yes but I might also answer no.
      - irishcoffee 7mo ago
        Here is a run-down of how an LLM works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model > Do you know how the human brain works? That science is still in its infancy but that's not stopped us. Stopped us from doing what exactly?
        nomel 7mo ago
        I think a charitable interpretation of their comment is that it hasn't stopped us from practical, fruitful, use. We didn't need an understanding of how it worked, or even a word for intelligence, let alone a definition of it, to get good practical results.
        irishcoffee 7mo ago
        It’s a statistical gradient descent prediction machine. I never said it wasn’t useful. It absolutely isn’t smart.
  - tbrownaw 7mo ago
    What is the as-of date on what work is economically valuable and how much is available?
    - nomel 7mo ago
      Sorry, I don't understand the question, or how it relates. Are you asking for the current understanding of what specific parts of human intelligence are economically valuable?
      - computably 7mo ago
        I'm pretty sure they were asking for a pinned date for definitions of "economically valuable" and "most (of total economic value)", specifically because, as previous comments noted, the definition and quantity of "economic value" vary over time. If AI hype is to be believed, and if we assume AGI has a slow takeoff, the economy will look very different in 2030, significantly shifting the goalposts for AGI relative to the same definition as of 2026.
        Jensson 7mo ago
        Well if humans can do economically valuable mental work the AI can't then its not AGI, don't you think? An AGI could learn that new job too and replace the human, so as long as we still have economically valuable mental work that only humans can do then we haven't reached AGI.
        nomel 7mo ago
        This is a strange binary I don't understand. There are humans that can't do the work of some humans. Intelligence is, clearly, a spectrum. I don't see why a general intelligence would need to have capabilities far beyond a human, when just replacing somewhat lacking humans could upend large portions of the economy. Again, "it's not AGI" arguments will eventually require that some humans aren't considered intelligent, which is the point in time that we'll all be able to agree "ok, this is AGI".
      - 7mo ago
  - godelski 7mo ago
    > If it can do things as good as or better than humans, then either the AI has a type of general intelligence or the human does not. I don't buy that. By your definition every machine has a type of general intelligence. Not just a bog standard calculator, but also my broom. It doesn't matter if you slap "smart" on the side, I'm not going to call my washing machine "intelligent". Especially considering it's over a decade old. I don't think these definitions make anything any clearer. If anything, they make them less. They equate humans to mindless automata. They create AGI by sly definition and let the proposer declare success arbitrarily.
    - nomel 7mo ago
      Sorry, I assumed the context was cleared, with the article above. Here's what I meant: > If it can do things as good as or better than humans, in general, then either the AI has a type of general intelligence ...
      - godelski 7mo ago
        Sorry, I assumed the comment was clear, with your comment above. Here's what I meant: > By your definition every machine has a type of general intelligence. Not just a bog standard calculator, but also my broom. I really don't know of any human that can out perform a standard calculator at calculations. I'm sure there are humans that can beat them in some cases, but clearly the calculator is a better generalized numeric calculation machine. A task that used to represent a significant amount of economic activity. I assumed this was rather common knowledge given it featuring in multiple hit motion pictures[0]. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340
        nomel 7mo ago
        I'm using the dictionary definition of "general": > General: 1. affecting or concerning all or most people, places, or things; widespread. To me, a general intelligence is one that is not just specific: it's affecting or concerning all or most areas of intelligence. A calculator is a very specific, very inflexible, type of intelligence, so it's not, by definition, general. And, I'm not talking about the indirect applications of a calculator or a specific intelligence. If you want to argue that we don't need the concept of AGI, because something like specific experts could be enough to drastically change the economy, then sure! That would be true. But I think that's a slightly different, complimentary, conversation. Even then, say we have all these experts, then a system to intelligently dispatch problems to them...maybe that's a specific implementation of AGI that would work. I think how less dependent on human intelligence the economy becomes, and how more dependent on non-human decision makers it becomes, is a reasonable measure. This seems controversial, which I can't really understand. I'm in hardware engineering, so maybe I have a different perspective, but goals based on outcome are the only ones that actually matter, especially if nobody has done it before.
- daxfohl 7mo ago
  I think you can say if human engineers still exist, it's hard to claim we have AGI. If human engineers have been entirely replaced, then it's hard to claim we don't have AGI.
  - kgwgk 7mo ago
    Because they are doing most of the economically valuable work?
    - daxfohl 7mo ago
      No, independently of OpenAI's definition. If we have AGI there's no reason we'd need to have humans working jobs that only involve typing stuff into a computer and going to meetings all day*. And if all those jobs are eliminated, I guess we'll have bigger problems than to debate whether we've achieved AGI or not. * Which is a much larger class of jobs than just engineering. And also excludes field engineers and other types of engineers that need a physical body for interacting with customers, etc.** ** Though even then, you could in theory divvy up the engineering part and the customer interaction part of the job, where the human that's doing the interaction part is primarily a proxy to the engineering agent that's in his earbud.
      - godelski 7mo ago
        > there's no reason we'd need to have humans working jobs that only involve typing stuff into a computer and going to meetings all day I'm not sure I understand, and want to check. That really applies to a lot of jobs. That's all admins, accountants, programmers, probably includes lawyers, and probably includes all C-suite execs. It's harder for me to think of jobs that don't fit under this umbrella. I can think of some, of course[0], but this is a crazy amount of replacement with a wide set of skills. But I also think that's a bad line to draw. Many of those jobs include a lot more than just typing into a computer. By your criteria we'd also be replacing most scientists, as so many are not doing physical experiments and using the computer to read the work of peers and develop new models. But also does get definition intended to exclude jobs where the computer just isn't the most convenient interface? We should be including more in that case since we can then make the connection for that interface. I think we need a much more refined definition. I don't like the broad strokes "is computer". Nor do I like skills based definitions. They're much easier to measure but easily hackable. I think we should try to define more by our actual understanding of what intelligence is. While we don't have a precise definition we have some pretty good answers already. I know people act like the lack of an exact definition is the same as having no definition but that's a crazy framing. If we had that requirement we wouldn't have any definitions as we know nothing with infinite precision. Even physics is just an approximation, but it's about the convergence to the truth [1] [side note] the conventional way to do references or notes here is with brackets like I did. So you don't have to escape your asterisks. *Also* if it lead a paragraph with two spaces you get verbatim text [0] farmer, construction worker, plumber, machinist, welder, teacher, doctors, etc [1] https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
maplethorpe 7mo ago
In my experience, AGI always seemed to be the stand-in phrase for "human like" intelligence, after AI was co-opted to mean simpler things like markov-chain chat bots and state machines that control agent behaviour in video games. If the definition has shifted once again to mean "a computer program that does a task pretty well for us", then what's the new term we're using to define human-level artificial intelligence?
catlifeonmars 7mo ago
> economically valuable work Is doing a ton of heavy lifting. What is considered economically valuable work is going to change from decade to decade, if not from year to year. What’s considered economically valuable also is going to be way different depending across individuals and nations within the exact same time frames too.
pinkmuffinere 7mo ago
This definition is not very precise though. For example, I think it can be argued from this definition that we had already reached AGI by the year 2010 (or earlier!). By 2010, computers were integrated into >50% economically valuable work, to the point that humans had mostly forgotten how to do them without computers. Drafting blueprints by hand was already a thing of the past, slide-rules were archaic, paper spreadsheets were long gone. You can debate whether these count as 'highly autonomous', but I don't think it's a clear slam-dunk either way. Not to mention dishwashers, textile weaving machines, CNC machines, assembly lines where >50% is automated, chemical/mineral refining operations, etc. The definition reminds me of the common quip about robotics, "it's robotics when it doesn't work, once it works it's a machine".
marcus_holmes 7mo ago
y'see, I would not define a system as "highly autonomous" if it only responds to requests. And I get that there are workarounds; effectively a cron job every second prompting "do the next thing". But in my personal definition of "highly autonomous" it would not need prompting at all. It would be thinking all the time, independently of requests.
- dragonwriter 7mo ago
  The model is not the system. The model is a component of the system. The "cron job" (or other means by which a continuous action loop is implemented) and the necessary prompting for it to gather input (including subsequent user input or other external data) and to pursue a set of objectives which evolves based on input are all also parts of the system.
  - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
    yeah, I get that. But the actual bit that's doing the thinking is restarting from scratch every time. It loads the context, does the next thing, maybe updates the context, shuts down. One second later the same thing. This is not "highly autonomous" Artifical Intelligence. Just IMHO. Other opinions are also valid.
    - dllthomas 7mo ago
      If you learned that a piece of the brain where meaningful computation takes place was stateless, would that cause you to question whether the human mind was "highly autonomous"?
      - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
        Good question. I don't know enough about neuroscience to really answer your question in depth. My opinion, uninformed as it is, is basically around the intuitive reasoning that something cannot be "highly autonomous" if it has to be kicked every second ;) Autonomous is defined as not needing to be controlled externally. And coupling that part with something as simple as cron job doesn't solve that in any meaningful way or make it "autonomous". A batch file coupled with a cron job that triggers it once a day is not an "autonomous system" to my mind. It's a scheduled system, and there's a significant difference between those things.
xmcqdpt2 7mo ago
is it most as an 50% of individual jobs? or able to produce 50% dollar for dollar? what does "economically" means here? would it cover teaching? child care? healthcare? etc.

They define AGI in their charter > artificial general intelligence (AGI)—by which we mean highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work

chrsw 7mo ago

I take "outperform" to mean "can replace".

djoldman 7mo ago

That definition is as I said: "something about which no conclusions can be drawn because the proposed definitions lack sufficient precision and completeness." "Highly autonomous systems" and "most economically valuable work" aren't precise enough to be useful. "Highly" implies that there is a continuum, so where does directed end and autonomy begin? "Most economically valuable work"... each word in that has wiggle room, not to mention that any reasonable interpretation of it is a shifting goalpost as the work done by humans over history has shifted a great deal. The point is that none of this is defined in a way so that people can agree that something has AGI/ASI/etc. or not. If people can't agree then there's no point in talking about it. EDIT: interestingly, the OpenAI definition of AGI specifically means that a subset of humans do not have AGI.

nomel 7mo ago
It's a definition based on practical results. That's a good definition, because it doesn't require we already know the exact implementation. It doesn't require guessing, in a literal "put your money where your mouth is" way. If it can do things as good as or better than humans, then either the AI has a type of general intelligence or the human does not. Defining capabilities based on outcome rather than implementation should be very familiar to an engineer, of any kind, because that's how every unsolved implementation must start.
- irishcoffee 7mo ago
  Do you know how an LLM works? Can you describe it?
  - nomel 7mo ago
    Sorry, what do current LLM architectures have to do with this? It should be extremely clear to you that current LLM don't fit this definition. If they did, we wouldn't be having this conversation!!!!
  - esafak 7mo ago
    Do you know how the human brain works? That science is still in its infancy but that's not stopped us.
    - godelski 7mo ago
      > Do you know how the human brain works? To what degree of accuracy? Depending on how you answer I might answer yes but I might also answer no.
    - irishcoffee 7mo ago
      Here is a run-down of how an LLM works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model > Do you know how the human brain works? That science is still in its infancy but that's not stopped us. Stopped us from doing what exactly?
      - nomel 7mo ago
        I think a charitable interpretation of their comment is that it hasn't stopped us from practical, fruitful, use. We didn't need an understanding of how it worked, or even a word for intelligence, let alone a definition of it, to get good practical results.
        irishcoffee 7mo ago
        It’s a statistical gradient descent prediction machine. I never said it wasn’t useful. It absolutely isn’t smart.
- tbrownaw 7mo ago
  What is the as-of date on what work is economically valuable and how much is available?
  - nomel 7mo ago
    Sorry, I don't understand the question, or how it relates. Are you asking for the current understanding of what specific parts of human intelligence are economically valuable?
    - computably 7mo ago
      I'm pretty sure they were asking for a pinned date for definitions of "economically valuable" and "most (of total economic value)", specifically because, as previous comments noted, the definition and quantity of "economic value" vary over time. If AI hype is to be believed, and if we assume AGI has a slow takeoff, the economy will look very different in 2030, significantly shifting the goalposts for AGI relative to the same definition as of 2026.
      - Jensson 7mo ago
        Well if humans can do economically valuable mental work the AI can't then its not AGI, don't you think? An AGI could learn that new job too and replace the human, so as long as we still have economically valuable mental work that only humans can do then we haven't reached AGI.
        nomel 7mo ago
        This is a strange binary I don't understand. There are humans that can't do the work of some humans. Intelligence is, clearly, a spectrum. I don't see why a general intelligence would need to have capabilities far beyond a human, when just replacing somewhat lacking humans could upend large portions of the economy. Again, "it's not AGI" arguments will eventually require that some humans aren't considered intelligent, which is the point in time that we'll all be able to agree "ok, this is AGI".
    - 7mo ago
- godelski 7mo ago
  > If it can do things as good as or better than humans, then either the AI has a type of general intelligence or the human does not. I don't buy that. By your definition every machine has a type of general intelligence. Not just a bog standard calculator, but also my broom. It doesn't matter if you slap "smart" on the side, I'm not going to call my washing machine "intelligent". Especially considering it's over a decade old. I don't think these definitions make anything any clearer. If anything, they make them less. They equate humans to mindless automata. They create AGI by sly definition and let the proposer declare success arbitrarily.
  - nomel 7mo ago
    Sorry, I assumed the context was cleared, with the article above. Here's what I meant: > If it can do things as good as or better than humans, in general, then either the AI has a type of general intelligence ...
    - godelski 7mo ago
      Sorry, I assumed the comment was clear, with your comment above. Here's what I meant: > By your definition every machine has a type of general intelligence. Not just a bog standard calculator, but also my broom. I really don't know of any human that can out perform a standard calculator at calculations. I'm sure there are humans that can beat them in some cases, but clearly the calculator is a better generalized numeric calculation machine. A task that used to represent a significant amount of economic activity. I assumed this was rather common knowledge given it featuring in multiple hit motion pictures[0]. [0] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340 https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4846340
      - nomel 7mo ago
        I'm using the dictionary definition of "general": > General: 1. affecting or concerning all or most people, places, or things; widespread. To me, a general intelligence is one that is not just specific: it's affecting or concerning all or most areas of intelligence. A calculator is a very specific, very inflexible, type of intelligence, so it's not, by definition, general. And, I'm not talking about the indirect applications of a calculator or a specific intelligence. If you want to argue that we don't need the concept of AGI, because something like specific experts could be enough to drastically change the economy, then sure! That would be true. But I think that's a slightly different, complimentary, conversation. Even then, say we have all these experts, then a system to intelligently dispatch problems to them...maybe that's a specific implementation of AGI that would work. I think how less dependent on human intelligence the economy becomes, and how more dependent on non-human decision makers it becomes, is a reasonable measure. This seems controversial, which I can't really understand. I'm in hardware engineering, so maybe I have a different perspective, but goals based on outcome are the only ones that actually matter, especially if nobody has done it before.
daxfohl 7mo ago
I think you can say if human engineers still exist, it's hard to claim we have AGI. If human engineers have been entirely replaced, then it's hard to claim we don't have AGI.
- kgwgk 7mo ago
  Because they are doing most of the economically valuable work?
  - daxfohl 7mo ago
    No, independently of OpenAI's definition. If we have AGI there's no reason we'd need to have humans working jobs that only involve typing stuff into a computer and going to meetings all day*. And if all those jobs are eliminated, I guess we'll have bigger problems than to debate whether we've achieved AGI or not. * Which is a much larger class of jobs than just engineering. And also excludes field engineers and other types of engineers that need a physical body for interacting with customers, etc.** ** Though even then, you could in theory divvy up the engineering part and the customer interaction part of the job, where the human that's doing the interaction part is primarily a proxy to the engineering agent that's in his earbud.
    - godelski 7mo ago
      > there's no reason we'd need to have humans working jobs that only involve typing stuff into a computer and going to meetings all day I'm not sure I understand, and want to check. That really applies to a lot of jobs. That's all admins, accountants, programmers, probably includes lawyers, and probably includes all C-suite execs. It's harder for me to think of jobs that don't fit under this umbrella. I can think of some, of course[0], but this is a crazy amount of replacement with a wide set of skills. But I also think that's a bad line to draw. Many of those jobs include a lot more than just typing into a computer. By your criteria we'd also be replacing most scientists, as so many are not doing physical experiments and using the computer to read the work of peers and develop new models. But also does get definition intended to exclude jobs where the computer just isn't the most convenient interface? We should be including more in that case since we can then make the connection for that interface. I think we need a much more refined definition. I don't like the broad strokes "is computer". Nor do I like skills based definitions. They're much easier to measure but easily hackable. I think we should try to define more by our actual understanding of what intelligence is. While we don't have a precise definition we have some pretty good answers already. I know people act like the lack of an exact definition is the same as having no definition but that's a crazy framing. If we had that requirement we wouldn't have any definitions as we know nothing with infinite precision. Even physics is just an approximation, but it's about the convergence to the truth [1] [side note] the conventional way to do references or notes here is with brackets like I did. So you don't have to escape your asterisks. *Also* if it lead a paragraph with two spaces you get verbatim text [0] farmer, construction worker, plumber, machinist, welder, teacher, doctors, etc [1] https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html

maplethorpe 7mo ago

In my experience, AGI always seemed to be the stand-in phrase for "human like" intelligence, after AI was co-opted to mean simpler things like markov-chain chat bots and state machines that control agent behaviour in video games. If the definition has shifted once again to mean "a computer program that does a task pretty well for us", then what's the new term we're using to define human-level artificial intelligence?

catlifeonmars 7mo ago

> economically valuable work Is doing a ton of heavy lifting. What is considered economically valuable work is going to change from decade to decade, if not from year to year. What’s considered economically valuable also is going to be way different depending across individuals and nations within the exact same time frames too.

pinkmuffinere 7mo ago

This definition is not very precise though. For example, I think it can be argued from this definition that we had already reached AGI by the year 2010 (or earlier!). By 2010, computers were integrated into >50% economically valuable work, to the point that humans had mostly forgotten how to do them without computers. Drafting blueprints by hand was already a thing of the past, slide-rules were archaic, paper spreadsheets were long gone. You can debate whether these count as 'highly autonomous', but I don't think it's a clear slam-dunk either way. Not to mention dishwashers, textile weaving machines, CNC machines, assembly lines where >50% is automated, chemical/mineral refining operations, etc. The definition reminds me of the common quip about robotics, "it's robotics when it doesn't work, once it works it's a machine".

marcus_holmes 7mo ago

y'see, I would not define a system as "highly autonomous" if it only responds to requests. And I get that there are workarounds; effectively a cron job every second prompting "do the next thing". But in my personal definition of "highly autonomous" it would not need prompting at all. It would be thinking all the time, independently of requests.

dragonwriter 7mo ago
The model is not the system. The model is a component of the system. The "cron job" (or other means by which a continuous action loop is implemented) and the necessary prompting for it to gather input (including subsequent user input or other external data) and to pursue a set of objectives which evolves based on input are all also parts of the system.
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago
  yeah, I get that. But the actual bit that's doing the thinking is restarting from scratch every time. It loads the context, does the next thing, maybe updates the context, shuts down. One second later the same thing. This is not "highly autonomous" Artifical Intelligence. Just IMHO. Other opinions are also valid.
  - dllthomas 7mo ago
    If you learned that a piece of the brain where meaningful computation takes place was stateless, would that cause you to question whether the human mind was "highly autonomous"?
    - marcus_holmes 7mo ago
      Good question. I don't know enough about neuroscience to really answer your question in depth. My opinion, uninformed as it is, is basically around the intuitive reasoning that something cannot be "highly autonomous" if it has to be kicked every second ;) Autonomous is defined as not needing to be controlled externally. And coupling that part with something as simple as cron job doesn't solve that in any meaningful way or make it "autonomous". A batch file coupled with a cron job that triggers it once a day is not an "autonomous system" to my mind. It's a scheduled system, and there's a significant difference between those things.

xmcqdpt2 7mo ago

is it most as an 50% of individual jobs? or able to produce 50% dollar for dollar? what does "economically" means here? would it cover teaching? child care? healthcare? etc.