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AGI is far from inevitable

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Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#31

Post by idle_zealot »

stroupwaffle wrote: post #21
godelski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but LLMs do solve problems that people thought were extremely difficult to solve ten years ago. Well for something to be G or I you need them to solve novel problems. These things have interested most of the Internet and I've yet to see a "reasoning" disentangle memorization from reasoning. Memorization doesn't mean they aren't useful (not sure why this was ever conflated since... Computers are useful...), but it's…

I think it will be an organoid brain bio-machine. We can already grow organs—just need to grow a brain and connect it to a machine.

Somehow I doubt that organic cells (structures optimized for independent operation and reproduction, then adapted to work semi-cooperatively) resemble optimal compute fabric for cognition. By that same token I doubt that optimal compute fabric for cognition resembles GPUs or CPUs as we understand them today. I would expect whatever this efficient design is to be extremely unlikely to occur naturally, structurally, and involve some very exotic manufactured materials.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#32

Post by SonOfLilit »

> ‘If you have a conversation with someone, you might recall something you said fifteen minutes before. Or a year before. Or that someone else explained to you half your life ago. Any such knowledge might be crucial to advancing the conversation you’re having. People do that seamlessly’, explains van Rooij.

Surprisingly, they seem to be attacking the only element of human cognition that LLMs already surpassed us at.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#33

Post by [deleted] »

Gehinnn wrote: post #18
tptacek wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you talking about the press release that the story on HN currently links to, or the paper that press release is about? The paper (I'm not vouching for it; I just skimmed it) appears to reduce AGI to a theoretical computational model, and then supplies a proof that it's not solvable in polynomial time.

I was referring to the press release article. I also looked at the paper now, and to me their presented proof looked more like a technicality than a new insight. If it's not solvable in polynomial time, how did nature solve it in a couple of million years?

[deleted]

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#34

Post by azinman2 »

SonOfLilit wrote: post #32

> ‘If you have a conversation with someone, you might recall something you said fifteen minutes before. Or a year before. Or that someone else explained to you half your life ago. Any such knowledge might be crucial to advancing the conversation you’re having. People do that seamlessly’, explains van Rooij. Surprisingly, they seem to be attacking the only element of human cognition that LLMs already surpassed us at.

They do not learn new facts instantly in a way that can rewrite old rules or even larger principals of logic. For example, if I showed you evidence right now that you were actually adopted (assuming previously you thought you werent), it would rock your world and you’d instantly change everything and doubt so much. Then when anything related to your family comes up this tiny but impactful fact would bleed into all of it. LLMs have no such ability.

This is similar to learning a new skill (the G part). I could give you a new tv and show you a remote that’s unlike any you’ve used before. You could likely learn it quickly and seamlessly adapt this new tool, as well as generalize its usage onto other new devices.

LLMs cannot do such things.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#35

Post by danaris »

godelski wrote: post #14
Gehinnn wrote: post #6

Basically the linked article argues like this: > That’s because cognition, or the ability to observe, learn and gain new insight, is incredibly hard to replicate through AI on the scale that it occurs in the human brain. (no other more substantial arguments were given) I'm also very skeptical on seeing AGI soon, but LLMs do solve problems that people thought were extremely difficult to solve ten years ago.

> but LLMs do solve problems that people thought were extremely difficult to solve ten years ago. Well for something to be G or I you need them to solve novel problems. These things have interested most of the Internet and I've yet to see a "reasoning" disentangle memorization from reasoning. Memorization doesn't mean they aren't useful (not sure why this was ever conflated since... Computers are useful...), but it's…

I have seen far, far too many people say things along the lines of "Sure, LLMs currently don't seem to be good at [thing LLMs are, at least as of now, fundamentally incapable of], but hey, some people are pretty bad at that sometimes too!"

It demonstrates such a complete misunderstanding of the basic nature of the problem that I am left baffled that some of these people claim to actually be in the machine-learning field themselves.

How can you not understand the difference between "humans are not absolutely perfect or reliable at this task" and "LLMs by their very nature cannot perform this task"?

I do not know if AGI is possible. Honestly, I'd love to believe that it is. However, it has not remotely been demonstrated that it is possible, and as such, it follows that it cannot have been demonstrated that it is inevitable. If you want to believe that it is inevitable, then I have no quarrel with you; if you want to preach that it is inevitable, and draw specious inferences to "prove" it, then I have a big quarrel with you.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#36

Post by godelski »

Moosdijk wrote: post #22
stroupwaffle wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it will be an organoid brain bio-machine. We can already grow organs—just need to grow a brain and connect it to a machine.

The keyword being “just”.

  just adverb 
  to turn a complex thing into magic with a simple wave of the hands

  E.g. To turn lead into gold you _just_ need to remove 3 protons

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#37

Post by threeseed »

nox101 wrote: post #24
fabian2k wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the people saying that AGI is happening in the near future know what would be necessary to achieve it. Neither do the AGI skeptics, we simply don't understand this area well enough. Evolution created intelligence and consciousness. This means that it is clearly possible for us to do the same. Doesn't mean that simply scaling LLMs could ever achieve it.

I'm just going by the title. If the title was, "Don't believe the hype, LLMs will not achieve AGI" then I might agree. If it was "Don't believe the hype, AGIs is 100s of years away" I'd consider the arguments. But, given brains exist, it does seem inevitable that we will eventually create something that replicates it even if we have to simulate every atom to do it. And once we do, it certainly seem inevitable that we…

> it does seem inevitable that we will eventually create something

Also don't forget that many suspect the brain may be using quantum mechanics so you will need to fully understand and document that field.

Whilst of course you are simulating every atom in the universe using humanity's complete understanding of every physical and mathematical model.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#38

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

umvi wrote: post #28
fabian2k wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the people saying that AGI is happening in the near future know what would be necessary to achieve it. Neither do the AGI skeptics, we simply don't understand this area well enough. Evolution created intelligence and consciousness. This means that it is clearly possible for us to do the same. Doesn't mean that simply scaling LLMs could ever achieve it.

> Evolution created intelligence and consciousness This is not provable, it an assumption. Religious people (which account for a large percent the population) claim intelligence and/or consciousness stem from a "spirit" which existed before birth and will continue to exist after death. Also unprovable, by the way. I think your foundational assertion would have to be rephrased as "Assuming things like God/spirits don'…

There's of course a wide spectrum of religious thought, so I can't claim to cover everyone. But most religious people would still acknowledge that animals can think, which means either that animals have some kind of soul (in which case why can't a robot have a soul?) or that being ensoulled isn't required to think.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#39

Post by godelski »

stroupwaffle wrote: post #21
godelski wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but LLMs do solve problems that people thought were extremely difficult to solve ten years ago. Well for something to be G or I you need them to solve novel problems. These things have interested most of the Internet and I've yet to see a "reasoning" disentangle memorization from reasoning. Memorization doesn't mean they aren't useful (not sure why this was ever conflated since... Computers are useful...), but it's…

I think it will be an organoid brain bio-machine. We can already grow organs—just need to grow a brain and connect it to a machine.

Maybe that'll be the first way, but there's nothing special about biology.

Remember, we don't have a rigorous definition of things like life, intelligence, and consciousness. We are narrowing it down and making progress, but we aren't there (some people confuse this with a "moving goalpost" but of course "it moves", because when we get closer we have better resolution as to what we're trying to figure out. It'd be a "moving goalpost" in the classic sense if we had a well defined definition and then updated in response to make something not work, specifically in a way that is inconsistent with the previous goalpost. As opposed to being more refined)

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#40

Post by SonOfLilit »

azinman2 wrote: post #34
SonOfLilit wrote: post #32

> ‘If you have a conversation with someone, you might recall something you said fifteen minutes before. Or a year before. Or that someone else explained to you half your life ago. Any such knowledge might be crucial to advancing the conversation you’re having. People do that seamlessly’, explains van Rooij. Surprisingly, they seem to be attacking the only element of human cognition that LLMs already surpassed us at.

They do not learn new facts instantly in a way that can rewrite old rules or even larger principals of logic. For example, if I showed you evidence right now that you were actually adopted (assuming previously you thought you werent), it would rock your world and you’d instantly change everything and doubt so much. Then when anything related to your family comes up this tiny but impactful fact would bleed into all of…

Can't today. Except for AlphaProof who can, by training on its own ideas. Tomorrow they might be able to, if we find better tricks (or maybe just scale more, since GPT3+ already shows (weak) online learning that it was definitely not trained for).
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