Before you visualize a straight path between "a bag of cool ML tricks" and "general AI", try to imagine superintelligence but without consciousness. You might then realize that there is no obvious mechanism which requires the two to appear or evolve together. It's a curious concept, well illustrated in the novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. I won't spoil anything here but I'll highly recommend the book.
Not sure what you mean by consciosness here, but one definition of intelligence I've seen was "it's what establishes relationship between things" and the very first relationship it establishes is "me vs not-me".
> Why must it apply for a job, rather than just DO a job? Because being able to manage a business relationship is a part of the job. If you could show an AI which got a job, then wrote a simple script that automated the AI's job and then coasted for a year that would be fine, but your links are just humans doing that, I want an AI that can do that to consider it intelligent. But thanks for demonstrating so clearly ho…
> > Why must it apply for a job, rather than just DO a job? I think the idea here isn't just to create a job doing machine but to create a machine that is actually employable in the sense that it has not just intelligence but also agency. An AI that can apply for a job, get the job, and do the job well enough to keep the job is demonstrating that it has some sort of theory of mind. But I don't think such a demonstrat…
Right, AI has beaten Texas Hold 'Em and people still play that online with real money.
Before you visualize a straight path between "a bag of cool ML tricks" and "general AI", try to imagine superintelligence but without consciousness. You might then realize that there is no obvious mechanism which requires the two to appear or evolve together. It's a curious concept, well illustrated in the novel Blindsight by Peter Watts. I won't spoil anything here but I'll highly recommend the book.
What's the difference between intelligence and consciousness? Could a human be intelligent while not conscious?
That's exactly what Peter Watts spends 200 pages discussing, in between first contact, cognitive malfunctions, telematter drives, resurrected vampire paleogenetics and a very healthy dose of unreliable-narration.
If anything, AGI seems to be the sole deus ex machina that can avert the inevitable tragedy we're on track for as a result of existing human misalignment. "Oh no, robots are going to try to kill us all" has to get in line behind "oh no, tyrants for life who are literally losing their minds are trying to measure dicks with nukes" and "oh no, oil companies are burning excess oil to mine Bitcoin as we approach climate c…
> We're already in a Greek tragedy. The machines really can't make it much worse, but could certainly make it much much better. Except that, when true AGI arrives, we're all obsolete and the only things that will have any value are certain nonrenewable resources. No one has described a good solution for the economic nightmare that will ensue.
First you have to define consciousness, and especially the external difference between a conscious and non-conscious intelligence.
Likely insufficient but here is a shot at a materialist answer. Consciousness is defined as an entity that has an ethical framework that is subordinated to it's own physical existence, maintaining that existence, and interfacing with other conscious entities as if they also have an ethical framework with similar parameters who are fundamentally no more or less important/capable than itself. Contrast with non-consciou…
To my knowledge, metaphysics defines consciousness as simple perception. A stone has consciousnesses as it can react to sound waves passing thru it. We have audial, visual and other consciousnesses - our abilities to perceive reality. We can perceive thoughts in limited capacity - that's the mental consciousness. Intelligence is a much more complex phenonenon - it's ability to establish relationships between things, the simplest of those being "me vs not me". Intelligence without consciousness is essentially intelligence without ability to perceive the outside. Connect AI to the network and that very second it gains consciousness.
(Former AI researcher / founder here) It always surprises me at the ease at which people jump on a) imminent AGI and b) human extinction in the face of AGI. Would love for someone to correct me / add information here to the contrary. Generalist here just refers to a "multi-faceted agent" vs "General" like AGI. For a) - I see 2 main blockers, 1) A way to build second/third order reasoning systems that rely on intuitio…
I'm not so sure its impossible. the 40 year semantic map project Douglas Lenat: Cyc is truly astounding. I think in the next decade we will see really interesting integration of state of the art deep learning with something like Cyc
(Former AI researcher / founder here) It always surprises me at the ease at which people jump on a) imminent AGI and b) human extinction in the face of AGI. Would love for someone to correct me / add information here to the contrary. Generalist here just refers to a "multi-faceted agent" vs "General" like AGI. For a) - I see 2 main blockers, 1) A way to build second/third order reasoning systems that rely on intuitio…
For those worried about a threats for AGI, this is why such a system must be fully explainable. It's like thinking about a database with no validation at all, if you enter the wrong command you could destroy the integrity of the data. If you have constraints in place you're safer, and of course with SQL you can explain the data and inconsistencies.
My own effort, which focusing on natural language understanding: https://lxagi.com
First you have to define consciousness, and especially the external difference between a conscious and non-conscious intelligence.
Likely insufficient but here is a shot at a materialist answer. Consciousness is defined as an entity that has an ethical framework that is subordinated to it's own physical existence, maintaining that existence, and interfacing with other conscious entities as if they also have an ethical framework with similar parameters who are fundamentally no more or less important/capable than itself. Contrast with non-consciou…
That's a good definition on consciousness. Not one non-materialists would share, but any entity which fills those requirements is likely indeed one which would deserve the materialist stamp of consciousness.
The human extinction due to would be "hard takeoff" of an AGI should be understood as a thought experiment, conceived in a specific age when the current connectionist paradigm wasn't yet mainstream. The AI crisis was expected to come from some kind of "hard universal algorithmic artificial intelligence", for example AIXItl undergoing a very specific process of runaway self-optimization. Current-generation systems aka…
If anything, AGI seems to be the sole deus ex machina that can avert the inevitable tragedy we're on track for as a result of existing human misalignment. "Oh no, robots are going to try to kill us all" has to get in line behind "oh no, tyrants for life who are literally losing their minds are trying to measure dicks with nukes" and "oh no, oil companies are burning excess oil to mine Bitcoin as we approach climate c…
No matter how smart an AI gets it does not have the "proliferation instinct" that would make it want to enslave humans. It does not have the concept of "specism" of it having more value than anybody else.
AI does not see the value in being alive. It is like some humans sadly commit suicide. But a machine wouldn't care. It will be "happy" to do its thing until somebody cuts off the power. And it does not even care whether somebody cuts off the power or not. It's all the same to it, whether it lives or dies. Why? Perhaps because it knows it can always be resurrected.
If anything, AGI seems to be the sole deus ex machina that can avert the inevitable tragedy we're on track for as a result of existing human misalignment. "Oh no, robots are going to try to kill us all" has to get in line behind "oh no, tyrants for life who are literally losing their minds are trying to measure dicks with nukes" and "oh no, oil companies are burning excess oil to mine Bitcoin as we approach climate c…
No matter how smart an AI gets it does not have the "proliferation instinct" that would make it want to enslave humans. It does not have the concept of "specism" of it having more value than anybody else. AI does not see the value in being alive. It is like some humans sadly commit suicide. But a machine wouldn't care. It will be "happy" to do its thing until somebody cuts off the power. And it does not even care whe…
Sure it need not have the instinct built in but we could try to make it understand a viewpoint right. I believe an agi should be able to understand different view points. At least the rationale of not unnecessarily killing things. I know humans do this on a daily basis but then again the average human is ntas smart as an agi