4 ms·

Someone behind this study clearly has little faith in the imminence of AGI.

chriswarbo 12y ago
Well, it's been imminent since the summer of 1956 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conferences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conferences )
- marcosdumay 12y ago
  Or, in other words, for about half the time those people are expecting no AI. Never mind the Moore's Law putting computers more capable than our brains less than 30 years away.
  - gweinberg 12y ago
    Nobody thinks Moore's law will last another 30 years.
    - dudus 12y ago
      Nobody thought it would last till here
      - jblow 12y ago
        See this graph: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/CPU-Scaling.jpg http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/CPU-Sc... The green line was the only one still going, and it plateaued about a year ago (you'd see that in a newer graph).
        dysfunction 12y ago
        The green line is the only one that Moore's law is about. Power consumption plateauing is a good thing, clock speed was never going to be the primary driver of performance increases long-term, and instruction-level parellelism (green line) is not a measure of performance-per-clock-cycle.
    - maaku 12y ago
      There's plenty of room on the bottom.
    - marcosdumay 12y ago
      Well, I think it's already dead for some good 3 or 4 years. It just didn't start stinking yet. But that's no reason to think that it'll take more than 100 years.
  - kmicklas 12y ago
    Moore's Law is about transistor density, not computing power, so no it won't. We could probably already build a computer more powerful than the human brain, it would just be huge (millions of cores or something). But that wouldn't help, because the real issue is that the Von Neumann architecture fundamentally prevents scaling the kinds of computations we want to do for neural networks. We need something more neuromorphic, although probably still discrete. (I'm guessing basically just a giant DSP integrated into memory on the same core.)
    - rl3 12y ago
      You may find these relevant: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529691/ibm-chip-processes-data-similar-to-the-way-your-brain-does/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529691/ibm-chip-process... http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-simulates-530-billon-neurons-100-trillion-synapses-on-worlds-fastest-supercomputer http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-simulates-530-billon-neurons-1...
- eli_gottlieb 12y ago
  Once upon a time, men said that AGI was imminent despite the fact that they had no computational model whatsoever of human cognition, and no limitary results other. Now, we have increasingly good computational models of human cognition, with abundant limitary results on both human and mechanical reasoning, but only madmen believe AGI will work in their lifetimes. Irony!

Well, it's been imminent since the summer of 1956 ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conferences http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_Conferences )

marcosdumay 12y ago
Or, in other words, for about half the time those people are expecting no AI. Never mind the Moore's Law putting computers more capable than our brains less than 30 years away.
- gweinberg 12y ago
  Nobody thinks Moore's law will last another 30 years.
  - dudus 12y ago
    Nobody thought it would last till here
    - jblow 12y ago
      See this graph: http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/CPU-Scaling.jpg http://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/CPU-Sc... The green line was the only one still going, and it plateaued about a year ago (you'd see that in a newer graph).
      - dysfunction 12y ago
        The green line is the only one that Moore's law is about. Power consumption plateauing is a good thing, clock speed was never going to be the primary driver of performance increases long-term, and instruction-level parellelism (green line) is not a measure of performance-per-clock-cycle.
  - maaku 12y ago
    There's plenty of room on the bottom.
  - marcosdumay 12y ago
    Well, I think it's already dead for some good 3 or 4 years. It just didn't start stinking yet. But that's no reason to think that it'll take more than 100 years.
- kmicklas 12y ago
  Moore's Law is about transistor density, not computing power, so no it won't. We could probably already build a computer more powerful than the human brain, it would just be huge (millions of cores or something). But that wouldn't help, because the real issue is that the Von Neumann architecture fundamentally prevents scaling the kinds of computations we want to do for neural networks. We need something more neuromorphic, although probably still discrete. (I'm guessing basically just a giant DSP integrated into memory on the same core.)
  - rl3 12y ago
    You may find these relevant: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529691/ibm-chip-processes-data-similar-to-the-way-your-brain-does/ http://www.technologyreview.com/news/529691/ibm-chip-process... http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-simulates-530-billon-neurons-100-trillion-synapses-on-worlds-fastest-supercomputer http://www.kurzweilai.net/ibm-simulates-530-billon-neurons-1...
eli_gottlieb 12y ago
Once upon a time, men said that AGI was imminent despite the fact that they had no computational model whatsoever of human cognition, and no limitary results other. Now, we have increasingly good computational models of human cognition, with abundant limitary results on both human and mechanical reasoning, but only madmen believe AGI will work in their lifetimes. Irony!