5 ms·

Many people see Artificial General Intelligence as a panacea. The idea is, "We'll create artificially intelligent scientists who will solve all of our other pro

by hooande 13y ago

Many people see Artificial General Intelligence as a panacea. The idea is, "We'll create artificially intelligent scientists who will solve all of our other problems for us!". I think that future generations will look back on this as a modern version of alchemy. If blogs had existed centuries ago I'm sure that people would have called the transmutation of metal the most important trend of their time. This isn't to denigrate the author of this post or the people who have dedicated their lives to AGI research. It's just that this idea probably falls into the category of "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is". [1] We have no proof that artificial general intelligence can exist. We have numerous examples of specific intelligence: playing chess, driving cars, various forms of categorization. But we don't have a single example of an application that can handle a task that it hasn't been specifically trained and tested for. It's not to say that it isn't possible, but there is no more evidence for AGI than there is for Bigfoot, leprechauns or space aliens. The idea of artificial consciousness currently requires a leap of faith. The most important trend today is collecting massive amounts of data and using them to make accurate predictions. Instead of lusting after one all-singing all-dancing intelligent program we should focus on tackling one form of decision making at a time. Drive cars, land planes, predict the weather and calculate the best way to get from point A to point B. One day we'll wake up in a world where artificial intelligence is all around us and the idea of a one size fits all solution will seem silly and quaint. [1] In fairness, this was said about every amazing thing in modern life. You never know.

kamaal 13y ago
Firstly is there even a Artificial General Intelligence even in Humans? I know how to play chess, but I don't seem to be playing it as well as Gary Kasparov.
- edanm 13y ago
  Usually, people define Intelligence to be "that thing humans have". We can recognise it in ourselves and other humans, realise it doesn't exist in animals, but there is no really good definition of what that means. But that doesn't mean anything. Creating something artificial that has whatever it is that we have is the goal.
theatgrex 13y ago
But we do have proof that general intelligence exists. So How would it be impossible for artificial general intelligence to exist ? Do you believe in mind body dualism? AGI will be difficult but comparing it to Bigfoot or Leperchauns is rediculous. There is a huge difference between very very very hard and impossible.
- 001sky 13y ago
  Gold exists, So How would it be impossible alchemy to exist ?
  - RogerL 13y ago
    Star fusion does it every day. Evidence that something exists is evidence that it is created.
    - 001sky 13y ago
      Alchemy and AI are both a bit more culturally specific. I agree that seeing life on earth would not logically be inconsistent with extr-terrestial life existing. But that is not to say AI=ET.
  - weirdcat 13y ago
    But it does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
  - theatgrex 13y ago
    if by alchemy you mean making gold from another element then it does exist. we just cant do it yet
    - TeMPOraL 13y ago
electrograv 13y ago
I'm sorry, but AGI vs Alchemy is a poor analogy with almost no parallels. I see this as a rather blatant strawman argument. Flying machines vs AGI makes a much better analogy. Natural flying machines (birds) existed in nature, before artificial ones (planes) were invented. Artificial manned flight was speculated as a possibility for centuries with no macroscopic working examples, and heavily criticized as a transportational panacea/fantasy that was seen as clearly impossible to people at the time. In fact, the analogy extends startlingly far. People doubted the possibility of manned flying machines for the longest time, with arguments strikingly similar to yours, e.g. 'We have no proof that such artificial flying contraptions can exist!'. Explaining away natural flight as a supernatural magic only accessible to birds is also eerily similar to the constantly retreating dualistic arguments against a mechanical brain. Even your criticisms of current AI has analogues[2]. Long ago, even in ancient times, there is evidence of small "toy" birds that might have flown much like paper planes. Many similar toy examples existed around the 19th/20th century, too, yet many people still vigorously doubted the possibility of a flying machine that could carry a human. Let's compare a paraphrase of common arguments against heavier-than-air human flight, with a paraphrase of your argument: Of course we have natural examples of flight, as we see birds all around us. But there is no more evidence for human flight than there is for Bigfoot, leprechauns or space aliens. Sure, we have little toy examples of flying machines, but they're very limited -- the idea of full heavier-than-air human flight requires a leap of faith. Vs. [Of course we have natural examples of AI, I, the author presumably am one.] But there is no more evidence for AGI than there is for Bigfoot, leprechauns or space aliens. Sure, we have little toy examples of AI, but they're very limited -- the idea of full AGI requires a leap of faith. [1] (Obviously I'm not referring to fusion or anything like that, because people of that era wouldn't have recognized that as transmutation.) [2] To be fair, I think it's safe to say old-school non-probabilistic AI is dead. But just because one path ends doesn't mean there aren't a thousand others constantly exploring new ideas. Indeed, recent advances in deep learning are incredibly promising.
- querious 13y ago
  The question that comes up for me at this point is whether there is much that is dispensable about humans when it comes to exhibiting intelligent behavior (running on 100 watts, no less). It turned out that for abstracting useful flight dynamics based on birds, there was a rather simple rule: lift > weight. Sure, reducing it to that simple formula may not help you build a machine that maneuvers as well as birds and insects do, but we didn't need that for flight. We just wanted to cross an ocean in less than 6 weeks. Whether the flight analogy carries on to intelligence, in my mind, depends on how many of our subsystems are 1) indispensable for intelligence, and 2) reasonably computationally reducible. From neurotransmitters to ganglia cells to hormones and bacteria in the gut, we have found a lot of subsystems that contribute to our abilities to make diverse, everyday decisions that the ideal AI we are discussing would have to make. The cortex actually seems like one of the most orderly and therefore reducible parts of the apparatus. The hormonal system that regulates emotion based decision making may be far more difficult to abstract and less efficient to model. And there are many many other systems. Could it be that without details of those subsystems, our AI behaves in less than optimal ways the same way a human would? How much can we get away with reducing biology to simpler rules while maintaining general intelligence? It is possible I suppose that all those biological dependencies are merely hampering an ideal algorithm for generalized intelligence that we are only crude approximations of, a powerful and simple algorithm we can finally free of biological constraints, -- but it's too late to get into the probability of that hypothesis! In any case it's not clear to me how that kind of nonhuman intelligence would serve us.
welldefined 13y ago
Humans exhibit "intelligence". Humans exist in the physical world. There is some physical process which produces "intelligence". A priori, there is no reason to believe this process cannot be understood, engineered, and re-implemented (whether it be in silicon or in a biological way). Your argument could have been made for every piece of technology before it existed. Here's what scientists, engineers, and mathematicians do: they either keep trying, or they find a reason why it's impossible.
anigbrowl 13y ago
we don't have a single example of an application that can handle a task that it hasn't been specifically trained and tested for Get up and go look in the bathroom mirror, there's your example. If you're saying that our intelligence/consciousness derives from some secret sauce, then you're essentially making John Searle's Chinese Room argument and it's on you to show what the difference is between sapience and the appearance of sapience.
nnq 13y ago
It's funny that most people that are actually working on AGI have stopped even bothering to provide arguments for why they think AGI it's possible to the general public, because they know they're close and that "they'll just prove that it's possible to build it by fucking building it" instead of doing armchair thinking, while AGI detractors don't lose any opportunity to launch pseudo-arguments like missiles :) ...just to bite the bate a bit: > We have no proof that artificial general intelligence can exist. Well, we had no proof that fire can be produced ultil the first paleohumans learned to make fire. We had no proof that mechanized flight was possible until we built the first flying machines. We had no proof that space flight is possible before we made it possible etc. These kinds of arguments only make some sort of sense when you reason from first principle instead of reasoning by analogy: for example if you found an argument that, starting from the current known basic laws of physics, would after some logical steps (no, analogies with "what we now know exists" don't count as logical steps) arrive at the conclusion that AGI is not possible. Elon Musk has a cute and short explanation of "reasoning from first principle" vs. "reasoning by analogy": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=1356 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=1356 . My point is that the way you and other people like you reason "by analogy" is just plain wrong. It's a useful way of thinking, that can help you make lots of very good business decision and profit from them. But when you apply it to technology or science it becomes obvious just how wrong it is, as you just said it: "In fairness, this was said about every amazing thing in modern life.". If you are a teacher/mentor/speaker etc., please don't expose your students or other younger minds with potential to innovate to this way of thinking! This mindset is the most effective way of killing innovation. It doesn't matter that much the topic of whether AGI is possible or not. It's this way of thinking that is extremely toxic to innovation, even it may seem quite harmless and very useful.
- marvin 13y ago
  >It's funny that most people that are actually working on AGI have stopped even bothering to provide arguments for why they think AGI it's possible to the general public, because they know they're close and that "they'll just prove that it's possible to build it by fucking building it" instead of doing armchair thinking, while AGI detractors don't lose any opportunity to launch pseudo-arguments like missiles :) If you've read some history, it's clear that this is exactly what the Wright brothers did when they pioneered powered flight. Three things makes Kitty Hawk a good place to test airplanes: You'll survive if you crash in the sand dunes, there is enough steady wind and there are no newspaper reporters around to make fun of your failures.
eli_gottlieb 13y ago
>But we don't have a single example of an application that can handle a task that it hasn't been specifically trained and tested for. "Playing Atari Through Deep Reinforcement Learning" was published just this last year. >The idea of artificial consciousness currently requires a leap of faith. Detach the notion of AGI from "artificial consciousness" or "artificial people". Contrary to the normal Humans Are Special shtick we all recite, intelligence is only one design feature of us homo sapiens sapiens out of very many. "Intelligence" in software terms is just machine learning in active decision environments. Or in other words, Machine Learning + Decision Theory = Artificial Intelligence. This is not to say we should be cheerleading for the fabled "Strong AI" within the near term. Quite the opposite: I'm trying to express just how far the distance is between software that can learn and perform some general task without being specifically purpose-built, and a conscious, sapient Asimovian robot deserving of personhood rights, and of course Skynet. For an even further elaboration of just how far off we are from the latter two forms of "AI": we currently have literally no way of specifying tasks or goals to general AI agents other than reinforcement learning. We are stuck training our software like we train our dogs: give it a cookie when it does the right thing, bring out the rolled-up newspaper when it goes wrong. So yeah. AI is almost definitely possible, and a formal field of research regarding it does exist, but we are indeed decades away from anything really and truly useful for large-scale applications such as killing all humans.
psionski 13y ago
General AI is not only possible, if you are to believe a TED talk it's already a solved problem. We already know how to make programs that determine their own goals and how to accomplish them. If it's true, http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_for_intelligence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_f... is the greatest discovery in human history :)
arh68 13y ago
>The most important trend today is collecting massive amounts of data and using them to make accurate predictions. Does it strike you odd that humans have real trouble doing this? We are not good with 'big' data. Maybe from a large population things can be inferred, but why are we programming computers to do things we can't? Did the goalposts move? (yes) I do think AGI lacks the incompleteness that's seemingly required of everything real. With no constraint (humans have many: low wattage, 8hr GC cycles, fairly static network structure..), it's too perfect a goal.

by hooande 13y ago

kamaal 13y ago

Firstly is there even a Artificial General Intelligence even in Humans? I know how to play chess, but I don't seem to be playing it as well as Gary Kasparov.

edanm 13y ago
Usually, people define Intelligence to be "that thing humans have". We can recognise it in ourselves and other humans, realise it doesn't exist in animals, but there is no really good definition of what that means. But that doesn't mean anything. Creating something artificial that has whatever it is that we have is the goal.

theatgrex 13y ago

But we do have proof that general intelligence exists. So How would it be impossible for artificial general intelligence to exist ? Do you believe in mind body dualism? AGI will be difficult but comparing it to Bigfoot or Leperchauns is rediculous. There is a huge difference between very very very hard and impossible.

001sky 13y ago
Gold exists, So How would it be impossible alchemy to exist ?
- RogerL 13y ago
  Star fusion does it every day. Evidence that something exists is evidence that it is created.
  - 001sky 13y ago
    Alchemy and AI are both a bit more culturally specific. I agree that seeing life on earth would not logically be inconsistent with extr-terrestial life existing. But that is not to say AI=ET.
- weirdcat 13y ago
  But it does: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_transmutation
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
- theatgrex 13y ago
  if by alchemy you mean making gold from another element then it does exist. we just cant do it yet
  - TeMPOraL 13y ago

electrograv 13y ago

I'm sorry, but AGI vs Alchemy is a poor analogy with almost no parallels. I see this as a rather blatant strawman argument. Flying machines vs AGI makes a much better analogy. Natural flying machines (birds) existed in nature, before artificial ones (planes) were invented. Artificial manned flight was speculated as a possibility for centuries with no macroscopic working examples, and heavily criticized as a transportational panacea/fantasy that was seen as clearly impossible to people at the time. In fact, the analogy extends startlingly far. People doubted the possibility of manned flying machines for the longest time, with arguments strikingly similar to yours, e.g. 'We have no proof that such artificial flying contraptions can exist!'. Explaining away natural flight as a supernatural magic only accessible to birds is also eerily similar to the constantly retreating dualistic arguments against a mechanical brain. Even your criticisms of current AI has analogues[2]. Long ago, even in ancient times, there is evidence of small "toy" birds that might have flown much like paper planes. Many similar toy examples existed around the 19th/20th century, too, yet many people still vigorously doubted the possibility of a flying machine that could carry a human. Let's compare a paraphrase of common arguments against heavier-than-air human flight, with a paraphrase of your argument: Of course we have natural examples of flight, as we see birds all around us. But there is no more evidence for human flight than there is for Bigfoot, leprechauns or space aliens. Sure, we have little toy examples of flying machines, but they're very limited -- the idea of full heavier-than-air human flight requires a leap of faith. Vs. [Of course we have natural examples of AI, I, the author presumably am one.] But there is no more evidence for AGI than there is for Bigfoot, leprechauns or space aliens. Sure, we have little toy examples of AI, but they're very limited -- the idea of full AGI requires a leap of faith. [1] (Obviously I'm not referring to fusion or anything like that, because people of that era wouldn't have recognized that as transmutation.) [2] To be fair, I think it's safe to say old-school non-probabilistic AI is dead. But just because one path ends doesn't mean there aren't a thousand others constantly exploring new ideas. Indeed, recent advances in deep learning are incredibly promising.

querious 13y ago
The question that comes up for me at this point is whether there is much that is dispensable about humans when it comes to exhibiting intelligent behavior (running on 100 watts, no less). It turned out that for abstracting useful flight dynamics based on birds, there was a rather simple rule: lift > weight. Sure, reducing it to that simple formula may not help you build a machine that maneuvers as well as birds and insects do, but we didn't need that for flight. We just wanted to cross an ocean in less than 6 weeks. Whether the flight analogy carries on to intelligence, in my mind, depends on how many of our subsystems are 1) indispensable for intelligence, and 2) reasonably computationally reducible. From neurotransmitters to ganglia cells to hormones and bacteria in the gut, we have found a lot of subsystems that contribute to our abilities to make diverse, everyday decisions that the ideal AI we are discussing would have to make. The cortex actually seems like one of the most orderly and therefore reducible parts of the apparatus. The hormonal system that regulates emotion based decision making may be far more difficult to abstract and less efficient to model. And there are many many other systems. Could it be that without details of those subsystems, our AI behaves in less than optimal ways the same way a human would? How much can we get away with reducing biology to simpler rules while maintaining general intelligence? It is possible I suppose that all those biological dependencies are merely hampering an ideal algorithm for generalized intelligence that we are only crude approximations of, a powerful and simple algorithm we can finally free of biological constraints, -- but it's too late to get into the probability of that hypothesis! In any case it's not clear to me how that kind of nonhuman intelligence would serve us.

welldefined 13y ago

Humans exhibit "intelligence". Humans exist in the physical world. There is some physical process which produces "intelligence". A priori, there is no reason to believe this process cannot be understood, engineered, and re-implemented (whether it be in silicon or in a biological way). Your argument could have been made for every piece of technology before it existed. Here's what scientists, engineers, and mathematicians do: they either keep trying, or they find a reason why it's impossible.

anigbrowl 13y ago

we don't have a single example of an application that can handle a task that it hasn't been specifically trained and tested for Get up and go look in the bathroom mirror, there's your example. If you're saying that our intelligence/consciousness derives from some secret sauce, then you're essentially making John Searle's Chinese Room argument and it's on you to show what the difference is between sapience and the appearance of sapience.

nnq 13y ago

It's funny that most people that are actually working on AGI have stopped even bothering to provide arguments for why they think AGI it's possible to the general public, because they know they're close and that "they'll just prove that it's possible to build it by fucking building it" instead of doing armchair thinking, while AGI detractors don't lose any opportunity to launch pseudo-arguments like missiles :) ...just to bite the bate a bit: > We have no proof that artificial general intelligence can exist. Well, we had no proof that fire can be produced ultil the first paleohumans learned to make fire. We had no proof that mechanized flight was possible until we built the first flying machines. We had no proof that space flight is possible before we made it possible etc. These kinds of arguments only make some sort of sense when you reason from first principle instead of reasoning by analogy: for example if you found an argument that, starting from the current known basic laws of physics, would after some logical steps (no, analogies with "what we now know exists" don't count as logical steps) arrive at the conclusion that AGI is not possible. Elon Musk has a cute and short explanation of "reasoning from first principle" vs. "reasoning by analogy": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=1356 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-s_3b5fRd8#t=1356 . My point is that the way you and other people like you reason "by analogy" is just plain wrong. It's a useful way of thinking, that can help you make lots of very good business decision and profit from them. But when you apply it to technology or science it becomes obvious just how wrong it is, as you just said it: "In fairness, this was said about every amazing thing in modern life.". If you are a teacher/mentor/speaker etc., please don't expose your students or other younger minds with potential to innovate to this way of thinking! This mindset is the most effective way of killing innovation. It doesn't matter that much the topic of whether AGI is possible or not. It's this way of thinking that is extremely toxic to innovation, even it may seem quite harmless and very useful.

marvin 13y ago
>It's funny that most people that are actually working on AGI have stopped even bothering to provide arguments for why they think AGI it's possible to the general public, because they know they're close and that "they'll just prove that it's possible to build it by fucking building it" instead of doing armchair thinking, while AGI detractors don't lose any opportunity to launch pseudo-arguments like missiles :) If you've read some history, it's clear that this is exactly what the Wright brothers did when they pioneered powered flight. Three things makes Kitty Hawk a good place to test airplanes: You'll survive if you crash in the sand dunes, there is enough steady wind and there are no newspaper reporters around to make fun of your failures.

eli_gottlieb 13y ago

>But we don't have a single example of an application that can handle a task that it hasn't been specifically trained and tested for. "Playing Atari Through Deep Reinforcement Learning" was published just this last year. >The idea of artificial consciousness currently requires a leap of faith. Detach the notion of AGI from "artificial consciousness" or "artificial people". Contrary to the normal Humans Are Special shtick we all recite, intelligence is only one design feature of us homo sapiens sapiens out of very many. "Intelligence" in software terms is just machine learning in active decision environments. Or in other words, Machine Learning + Decision Theory = Artificial Intelligence. This is not to say we should be cheerleading for the fabled "Strong AI" within the near term. Quite the opposite: I'm trying to express just how far the distance is between software that can learn and perform some general task without being specifically purpose-built, and a conscious, sapient Asimovian robot deserving of personhood rights, and of course Skynet. For an even further elaboration of just how far off we are from the latter two forms of "AI": we currently have literally no way of specifying tasks or goals to general AI agents other than reinforcement learning. We are stuck training our software like we train our dogs: give it a cookie when it does the right thing, bring out the rolled-up newspaper when it goes wrong. So yeah. AI is almost definitely possible, and a formal field of research regarding it does exist, but we are indeed decades away from anything really and truly useful for large-scale applications such as killing all humans.

psionski 13y ago

General AI is not only possible, if you are to believe a TED talk it's already a solved problem. We already know how to make programs that determine their own goals and how to accomplish them. If it's true, http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_for_intelligence.html http://www.ted.com/talks/alex_wissner_gross_a_new_equation_f... is the greatest discovery in human history :)

arh68 13y ago

>The most important trend today is collecting massive amounts of data and using them to make accurate predictions. Does it strike you odd that humans have real trouble doing this? We are not good with 'big' data. Maybe from a large population things can be inferred, but why are we programming computers to do things we can't? Did the goalposts move? (yes) I do think AGI lacks the incompleteness that's seemingly required of everything real. With no constraint (humans have many: low wattage, 8hr GC cycles, fairly static network structure..), it's too perfect a goal.