6 ms·

> As long as there is a gap between AI and human learning, we do not have AGI. Back in the 90's, Scientific American had an article on AI - I believe this was

by BeetleB 7mo ago

> As long as there is a gap between AI and human learning, we do not have AGI. Back in the 90's, Scientific American had an article on AI - I believe this was around the time Deep Blue beat Kasparov at chess. One AI researcher's quote stood out to me: "It's silly to say airplanes don't fly because they don't flap their wings the way birds do." He was saying this with regards to the Turing test, but I think the sentiment is equally valid here. Just because a human can do X and the LLM can't doesn't negate the LLM's "intelligence", any more than an LLM doing a task better than a human negates the human's intelligence.

Raphael_Amiard 7mo ago
The very obvious flaw with that argument is that flying is defined by, you know, moving in the air, whereas intelligence tends to be defined with the baseline of human intelligence. You can invent a new meaning, but it seems kind of dishonest
NitpickLawyer 7mo ago
For me the whole are we there yet wrt AGI is already dead, since the tools we've had for ~1.5 years are already incredibly useful for me. So I just don't care anymore. For some people we're already there. For other we'll never get there. Definitions change, goalposts move, etc. In the meantime we're already seeing ASI stuff coming (self improvement and so on). But the arc-agi competitions are cool. Just to see where we stand, and have some months where the benchmarks aren't fully saturated. And, as someone else noted elswhere in the thread, some of these games are not exactly trivial, at least until you "get" the meta they're looking for.
- Auracle 7mo ago
  In the Expeditionary Force series of sci-fi novels pretty much every civilization treats their (very advanced, obviously AGI) AIs not as living beings. Humans are outliers in the story. I think there will always be a dichotomy. Obviously we aren't at the point where we should treat the models as beings, but even if we do get to that point there will be plenty of people that essentially will say they don't have souls, some indeterminate quality, etc.
daemonologist 7mo ago
Or the classic from Dijkstra (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD867.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD867...): > even Alan M. Turing allowed himself to be drawn into the discussion of the question whether computers can think. The question is just as relevant and just as meaningful as the question whether submarines can swim. (I am of the opinion that the thinking question is in fact a bit more relevant than the swimming one, but I understand where these are coming from.)
- imiric 7mo ago
  I've come across that quote several times, and reach the same conclusion as you. While I share Dijkstra's sentiment that "thinking machines" is largely a marketing term we've been chasing for decades, and this new cycle is no different, it's still worth discussing and... thinking about. The implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic human thinking are far beyond the implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic swimming. It's frankly disappointing that such a prominent computer scientist and philosopher would be so dismissive and uninterested in this fundamental CS topic. Also, it's worth contextualizing that quote. It's from a panel discussion in 1983, which was between the two major AI "winters", and during the Expert Systems hype cycle. Dijkstra was clearly frustrated by the false advertising, to which I can certainly relate today, and yet he couldn't have predicted that a few decades later we would have computers that mimic human thinking much more closely and are thus far more capable than Expert Systems ever were. There are still numerous problems to resolve, w.r.t. reliability, brittleness, explainability, etc., but the capability itself has vastly improved. So while we can still criticize modern "AI" companies for false advertising and anthropomorphizing their products just like in the 1980s hype cycle, the technology has clearly improved, which arguably wouldn't have happened if we didn't consider the question of whether machines can "think".
  - slfnflctd 7mo ago
    > The implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic human thinking are far beyond the implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic swimming It seems to me like too many people are missing this point. Modern philosophy tells us we can't even be certain whether other humans are conscious or not. The 'hard problem', p-zombies, etcetera. The fact that current LLMs can convince many actual humans that they are conscious (whether they are or not is irrelevant, I lean toward not but whatever) has implications which aren't being discussed enough. If you teach a kid that they can treat this intelligent-seeming 'bot' like an object with no mind, is it not plausible that they might then go on to feel they can treat other kids who are obviously far less intelligent like objects as well? Seriously, we need to be talking more about this. One of the most important questions about AI agents in my opinion should be, "can they suffer?", and if you can't answer that with a definitive "absolutely not" then we are suddenly in uncharted waters, ethically speaking. They can certainly act like they're suffering (edit: which, when witnessed by a credulous human audience, could cause them to suffer!). I think we should be treading much more carefully than many of us are.
unsupp0rted 7mo ago
I think there's some third baseline standard, which most humans and some AI can meet to be considered "intelligent". A lot of humans are essentially p-zombies, so they wouldn't meet the standard either. Possibly all humans. Possibly me too.
WarmWash 7mo ago
It's unlikely that intelligence comes in only human flavor. It also doesn't actually matter much, as ultimately the utility of it's outputs is what determines it's worth. There is the moral question of consciousness though, a test for which it seems humans will not be able to solve in the near future, which morally leads to a default position that we should assume the AI is conscious until we can prove it's not. But man, people really, really hate that conclusion.
jonahx 7mo ago
> As long as there is a gap between AI and human learning, we do not have AGI. Don't read the statement as a human dunk on LLMs, or even as philosophy. The gap is important because of its special and devastating economic consequences. When the gap becomes truly zero, all human knowledge work is replaceable. From there, with robots, its a short step to all work is replaceable. What's worse, the condition is sufficient but not even necessary. Just as planes can fly without flapping, the economy can be destroyed without full AGI.
- Uehreka 7mo ago
  If you’re concerned about the economic impact, then whether a model is AGI or not doesn’t matter. It really is more of a philosophical thing. There’s no “gap that becomes truly zero” at which point special consequences happen. By the time we achieve AGI, the lesser forms of AI will likely have replaced a lot of human knowledge labor through the exact “brute-force” methods Chollet is trying to factor out (which is why many people are saying that doing so is unproductive). AGI is like an event horizon: It does mean something, it is a point in space, but you don’t notice yourself going through it, the curvature smoothly increases through it.
- keiferski 7mo ago
  The gap is important because of its special and devastating economic consequences. When the gap becomes truly zero, all human knowledge work is replaceable. From there, with robots, its a short step to all work is replaceable. I don’t know why statements like this are just taken as gospel fact. There are plenty of economic activities which do not disappear even if an AI can do them. Here’s one: I support certain artists because I care about their particular life story and have seen them perform live. I don’t care if an AI can replicate their music because the AI didn’t experience life. Here’s another: positions that have deep experience in certain industries and have valuable networks; or that derive power by being in certain positions. You could build a model that incorporates every single thing the US president, any president, ever said, and it still wouldn’t get you in the position of being president. Many roles are contextual, not knowledge-based. The idea that AGI replaces all work only makes sense if you’re talking about a world with completely open, free information access. I don’t just mean in the obvious sense; I mean also “inside your head.” AI can only use data it has access to, and it’s never going to have access to everyone’s individual brain everywhere at all times. So here’s a better prediction: markets will gradually shift to adjust to this, information will become more secretive, and attention-based entertainment economics will become a larger and larger share of the overall economy.
jwpapi 7mo ago
You know what the G stands for in AGI? General intelligence. You could measure a plane on general versatility in air and it would lose against a bird. You could also measure it against energy consumption. There are a lot of things you can measure a lot of them are pointless, a lot of articles on HN are pointless. There are very valid reasons to measure that. You wouldn’t ask a plane to drive you to the neighbor or to buy you groceries at the supermarket. It’s not general mobile as you are, but it increases your mobility
- casey2 7mo ago
  Planes aren't trying to replace birds. ML is trying to replace humans, so unless they also demonstrate that quick learning ability isn't necessary to perform the tasks a human does the measures still make sense.
  - tome 7mo ago
    > ML is trying to replace humans Are household appliances trying to replace humans?
    - PurpleRamen 7mo ago
      Actually, they do. The purpose of many appliances is to reduce the workload of humans, with the end goal of zero human intervention.
EternalFury 7mo ago
So…calculators are intelligent? How about accountants that failed arithmetic 101 in high-school, are they intelligent? Generally intelligent?
olalonde 7mo ago
Something that surprises me about modern LLMs is that they're relatively smart yet lack consciousness. I used to believe that consciousness (e.g. a desire for self-preservation, intrinsic motivation) might be a necessary requirement for AGI/ASI, but it's increasingly looking like that may not be the case. If true, that's actually good news, since it makes the worst doomsday scenarios less likely.
- Davidzheng 7mo ago
  How can you tell?
  - olalonde 7mo ago
    How can I tell what? That current LLMs are not conscious or that AGI/ASI will not require consciousness?
    - WarmWash 7mo ago
      How do you know they aren't conscious of we don't know what consciousness is, and have no test to see if anyone or anything is conscious? This may seem like a joke, but your answer will likely be in the vain of "conscious things are obviously conscious", which gets us nowhere. I mean, self motivation and a desire to not be turned off can be programmed into even decades old AIs.
      - olalonde 7mo ago
        As a philosophical zombie myself[0], I'm well aware of how hard it is to define and test consciousness. That's why I tried to clarify what I meant with: desire for self-preservation and intrinsic motivation. Which LLMs clearly lack, don't you agree? Also, I'm not saying that those things couldn't be programmed in, just that so far, they don't seem necessary. [0] I lack a conscious experience and qualia
        petesergeant 7mo ago
Davidzheng 7mo ago
Important to remember that intelligence is not a singular thing and when the last gap is closed, most aspects will be highly superhuman
pron 7mo ago
Except there's a much simpler definition of flying than of intelligence.
mvkel 7mo ago
Humans can do a lot of things that don't require intelligence. Artificial intelligence does not need to be 100% human to be AGI.
- eddiewithzato 7mo ago
  It needs to pass the most basic concept of learning, which it can’t currently do. Probably wont ever do after listening to dario on his latest podcast run. Where we are at today is ASI (artificial semi-intelligence). Maybe in 20 years artificial super intelligence can be achieved, but certainly not AGI.
  - mvkel 7mo ago
    Taking a cursory glance at neurosymbolic ai, artificial curiosity, memory, continual learning, I think you'd find that we're extremely close.
casey2 7mo ago
All of flapping, flying and intelligence are physical actions. If your "flying" machine can't get up to altitude fast enough to avoid small hills then it's not an adequate flying system. Despite so many claims an LLM has never done any interesting task better than a human. I could claim that cat is better than humans at writing text, but the non-specificity of my language here makes that statement simultaneously meaningless and incorrect. Another meaningless and incorrect (but less incorrect than most pro AI sttements) "git clone" is better at producing correct and feature rich c compiler code than $20,000 worth of Claude tokens.
daveguy 7mo ago
>> As long as there is a gap between AI and human learning, we do not have AGI. >> "It's silly to say airplanes don't fly because they don't flap their wings the way birds do." > Just because a human can do X and the LLM can't doesn't negate the LLM's "intelligence", any more than an LLM doing a task better than a human negates the human's intelligence. You misinterpret what is meant by "a gap between AI and human learning". The point isn't that they aren't similar enough or that they aren't as intelligent. The statement is specifically about "learning". Humans learn continuously and can devise new strategies for problem solving. Current AI, especially LLMs are just snapshots of a single strategy. LLMs do not learn at all -- they specifically have "knowledge cutoffs" even with all the tools available to them in a harness we still have to wait for new frontier models or new fine tuning for them to solve significantly new problems. A human does this continually -- learn regardless of intelligence.

by BeetleB 7mo ago

Raphael_Amiard 7mo ago

The very obvious flaw with that argument is that flying is defined by, you know, moving in the air, whereas intelligence tends to be defined with the baseline of human intelligence. You can invent a new meaning, but it seems kind of dishonest

NitpickLawyer 7mo ago

For me the whole are we there yet wrt AGI is already dead, since the tools we've had for ~1.5 years are already incredibly useful for me. So I just don't care anymore. For some people we're already there. For other we'll never get there. Definitions change, goalposts move, etc. In the meantime we're already seeing ASI stuff coming (self improvement and so on). But the arc-agi competitions are cool. Just to see where we stand, and have some months where the benchmarks aren't fully saturated. And, as someone else noted elswhere in the thread, some of these games are not exactly trivial, at least until you "get" the meta they're looking for.

Auracle 7mo ago
In the Expeditionary Force series of sci-fi novels pretty much every civilization treats their (very advanced, obviously AGI) AIs not as living beings. Humans are outliers in the story. I think there will always be a dichotomy. Obviously we aren't at the point where we should treat the models as beings, but even if we do get to that point there will be plenty of people that essentially will say they don't have souls, some indeterminate quality, etc.

daemonologist 7mo ago

Or the classic from Dijkstra (https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD867.html https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD08xx/EWD867...): > even Alan M. Turing allowed himself to be drawn into the discussion of the question whether computers can think. The question is just as relevant and just as meaningful as the question whether submarines can swim. (I am of the opinion that the thinking question is in fact a bit more relevant than the swimming one, but I understand where these are coming from.)

imiric 7mo ago
I've come across that quote several times, and reach the same conclusion as you. While I share Dijkstra's sentiment that "thinking machines" is largely a marketing term we've been chasing for decades, and this new cycle is no different, it's still worth discussing and... thinking about. The implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic human thinking are far beyond the implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic swimming. It's frankly disappointing that such a prominent computer scientist and philosopher would be so dismissive and uninterested in this fundamental CS topic. Also, it's worth contextualizing that quote. It's from a panel discussion in 1983, which was between the two major AI "winters", and during the Expert Systems hype cycle. Dijkstra was clearly frustrated by the false advertising, to which I can certainly relate today, and yet he couldn't have predicted that a few decades later we would have computers that mimic human thinking much more closely and are thus far more capable than Expert Systems ever were. There are still numerous problems to resolve, w.r.t. reliability, brittleness, explainability, etc., but the capability itself has vastly improved. So while we can still criticize modern "AI" companies for false advertising and anthropomorphizing their products just like in the 1980s hype cycle, the technology has clearly improved, which arguably wouldn't have happened if we didn't consider the question of whether machines can "think".
- slfnflctd 7mo ago
  > The implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic human thinking are far beyond the implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic swimming It seems to me like too many people are missing this point. Modern philosophy tells us we can't even be certain whether other humans are conscious or not. The 'hard problem', p-zombies, etcetera. The fact that current LLMs can convince many actual humans that they are conscious (whether they are or not is irrelevant, I lean toward not but whatever) has implications which aren't being discussed enough. If you teach a kid that they can treat this intelligent-seeming 'bot' like an object with no mind, is it not plausible that they might then go on to feel they can treat other kids who are obviously far less intelligent like objects as well? Seriously, we need to be talking more about this. One of the most important questions about AI agents in my opinion should be, "can they suffer?", and if you can't answer that with a definitive "absolutely not" then we are suddenly in uncharted waters, ethically speaking. They can certainly act like they're suffering (edit: which, when witnessed by a credulous human audience, could cause them to suffer!). I think we should be treading much more carefully than many of us are.

unsupp0rted 7mo ago

I think there's some third baseline standard, which most humans and some AI can meet to be considered "intelligent". A lot of humans are essentially p-zombies, so they wouldn't meet the standard either. Possibly all humans. Possibly me too.

WarmWash 7mo ago

It's unlikely that intelligence comes in only human flavor. It also doesn't actually matter much, as ultimately the utility of it's outputs is what determines it's worth. There is the moral question of consciousness though, a test for which it seems humans will not be able to solve in the near future, which morally leads to a default position that we should assume the AI is conscious until we can prove it's not. But man, people really, really hate that conclusion.

jonahx 7mo ago

> As long as there is a gap between AI and human learning, we do not have AGI. Don't read the statement as a human dunk on LLMs, or even as philosophy. The gap is important because of its special and devastating economic consequences. When the gap becomes truly zero, all human knowledge work is replaceable. From there, with robots, its a short step to all work is replaceable. What's worse, the condition is sufficient but not even necessary. Just as planes can fly without flapping, the economy can be destroyed without full AGI.

Uehreka 7mo ago
If you’re concerned about the economic impact, then whether a model is AGI or not doesn’t matter. It really is more of a philosophical thing. There’s no “gap that becomes truly zero” at which point special consequences happen. By the time we achieve AGI, the lesser forms of AI will likely have replaced a lot of human knowledge labor through the exact “brute-force” methods Chollet is trying to factor out (which is why many people are saying that doing so is unproductive). AGI is like an event horizon: It does mean something, it is a point in space, but you don’t notice yourself going through it, the curvature smoothly increases through it.
keiferski 7mo ago
The gap is important because of its special and devastating economic consequences. When the gap becomes truly zero, all human knowledge work is replaceable. From there, with robots, its a short step to all work is replaceable. I don’t know why statements like this are just taken as gospel fact. There are plenty of economic activities which do not disappear even if an AI can do them. Here’s one: I support certain artists because I care about their particular life story and have seen them perform live. I don’t care if an AI can replicate their music because the AI didn’t experience life. Here’s another: positions that have deep experience in certain industries and have valuable networks; or that derive power by being in certain positions. You could build a model that incorporates every single thing the US president, any president, ever said, and it still wouldn’t get you in the position of being president. Many roles are contextual, not knowledge-based. The idea that AGI replaces all work only makes sense if you’re talking about a world with completely open, free information access. I don’t just mean in the obvious sense; I mean also “inside your head.” AI can only use data it has access to, and it’s never going to have access to everyone’s individual brain everywhere at all times. So here’s a better prediction: markets will gradually shift to adjust to this, information will become more secretive, and attention-based entertainment economics will become a larger and larger share of the overall economy.

jwpapi 7mo ago

You know what the G stands for in AGI? General intelligence. You could measure a plane on general versatility in air and it would lose against a bird. You could also measure it against energy consumption. There are a lot of things you can measure a lot of them are pointless, a lot of articles on HN are pointless. There are very valid reasons to measure that. You wouldn’t ask a plane to drive you to the neighbor or to buy you groceries at the supermarket. It’s not general mobile as you are, but it increases your mobility

casey2 7mo ago
Planes aren't trying to replace birds. ML is trying to replace humans, so unless they also demonstrate that quick learning ability isn't necessary to perform the tasks a human does the measures still make sense.
- tome 7mo ago
  > ML is trying to replace humans Are household appliances trying to replace humans?
  - PurpleRamen 7mo ago
    Actually, they do. The purpose of many appliances is to reduce the workload of humans, with the end goal of zero human intervention.

EternalFury 7mo ago

So…calculators are intelligent? How about accountants that failed arithmetic 101 in high-school, are they intelligent? Generally intelligent?

olalonde 7mo ago

Something that surprises me about modern LLMs is that they're relatively smart yet lack consciousness. I used to believe that consciousness (e.g. a desire for self-preservation, intrinsic motivation) might be a necessary requirement for AGI/ASI, but it's increasingly looking like that may not be the case. If true, that's actually good news, since it makes the worst doomsday scenarios less likely.

Davidzheng 7mo ago
How can you tell?
- olalonde 7mo ago
  How can I tell what? That current LLMs are not conscious or that AGI/ASI will not require consciousness?
  - WarmWash 7mo ago
    How do you know they aren't conscious of we don't know what consciousness is, and have no test to see if anyone or anything is conscious? This may seem like a joke, but your answer will likely be in the vain of "conscious things are obviously conscious", which gets us nowhere. I mean, self motivation and a desire to not be turned off can be programmed into even decades old AIs.
    - olalonde 7mo ago
      As a philosophical zombie myself[0], I'm well aware of how hard it is to define and test consciousness. That's why I tried to clarify what I meant with: desire for self-preservation and intrinsic motivation. Which LLMs clearly lack, don't you agree? Also, I'm not saying that those things couldn't be programmed in, just that so far, they don't seem necessary. [0] I lack a conscious experience and qualia
      - petesergeant 7mo ago

Davidzheng 7mo ago

Important to remember that intelligence is not a singular thing and when the last gap is closed, most aspects will be highly superhuman

pron 7mo ago

Except there's a much simpler definition of flying than of intelligence.

mvkel 7mo ago

Humans can do a lot of things that don't require intelligence. Artificial intelligence does not need to be 100% human to be AGI.

eddiewithzato 7mo ago
It needs to pass the most basic concept of learning, which it can’t currently do. Probably wont ever do after listening to dario on his latest podcast run. Where we are at today is ASI (artificial semi-intelligence). Maybe in 20 years artificial super intelligence can be achieved, but certainly not AGI.
- mvkel 7mo ago
  Taking a cursory glance at neurosymbolic ai, artificial curiosity, memory, continual learning, I think you'd find that we're extremely close.

casey2 7mo ago

All of flapping, flying and intelligence are physical actions. If your "flying" machine can't get up to altitude fast enough to avoid small hills then it's not an adequate flying system. Despite so many claims an LLM has never done any interesting task better than a human. I could claim that cat is better than humans at writing text, but the non-specificity of my language here makes that statement simultaneously meaningless and incorrect. Another meaningless and incorrect (but less incorrect than most pro AI sttements) "git clone" is better at producing correct and feature rich c compiler code than $20,000 worth of Claude tokens.

daveguy 7mo ago

>> As long as there is a gap between AI and human learning, we do not have AGI. >> "It's silly to say airplanes don't fly because they don't flap their wings the way birds do." > Just because a human can do X and the LLM can't doesn't negate the LLM's "intelligence", any more than an LLM doing a task better than a human negates the human's intelligence. You misinterpret what is meant by "a gap between AI and human learning". The point isn't that they aren't similar enough or that they aren't as intelligent. The statement is specifically about "learning". Humans learn continuously and can devise new strategies for problem solving. Current AI, especially LLMs are just snapshots of a single strategy. LLMs do not learn at all -- they specifically have "knowledge cutoffs" even with all the tools available to them in a harness we still have to wait for new frontier models or new fine tuning for them to solve significantly new problems. A human does this continually -- learn regardless of intelligence.