I've always wondered what motivates people to invest time taking these stances. It indicates a wildly different, nearly alien way of thinking to my own.
Which part of his reasoning do you find alien?
Why AGI Will Not Happen
31–40 of 57 posts
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#32You can count me as an AGI sceptic to extent that I don't think LLMs are the approach that are going to get us there, but I'm equally confident that we will get there, and that predictive neural nets are the core of the right approach.
The article is a bit rambling, but the main claims seem to be:
1) Computers can't emulate brains due to architecture (locality, caching, etc) and power consumption
2) GPUs are maxxing out in terms of performance (and implicitly AGI has to use GPUs)
3) Scaling is not enough, since due to 2) scaling is close to maxxing out
4) AGI won't happen because he defines AGI as requiring robotics, and seeing scaling of robotic experience as a limiting factor
5) Superintelligence (which he associates with self-improving AGI) won't happen because it'll again require more compute
It's a strange set of arguments, most of which don't hold up, and both manages to miss what is actually wrong with the current approach, and to conceive of what different approach will get us to AGI.
1) Brains don't have some exotic architecture than somehow gives them an advantage over computers in terms of locality, etc. The cortex is in fact basically a 2-D structure - a sheet of cortical columns, with a combination of local and long distance connections.
Where brains are different from a von-neumann architecture is that compute & memory are one and the same, but if we're comparing communication speed between different cortical areas, or TPU/etc chips, then the speed advantage goes to the computer.
2) Even if AGI had to use matmul and systolic arrays, and GPUs are maxxing out in terms of FLOPs, we could still scale compute, if needed, just by having more GPUs and faster and.or wider interconnect.
3) As above, it seems we can scale compute just by adding more GPUs and faster interconnect if needed, but in any case I don't think inability to scale is why AGI isn't about to emerge from LLMs.
4) Robotics and AGI are two separate things. A person lying in a hospital bed still has a brain and human-level AGI. Robots will eventually learn individually on-the-job, just as non-embodied AGI instances will, so size of pre-training datasets/experience will become irrelevant.
5) You need to define intelligence before supposing what super-human intelligence is and how it may come about, but Dettmers just talks about superintelligence in hand-wavy fashion as something that AGI may design, and assumes that whatever it is will require more compute than AGI. In reality intelligence is prediction and is limited in domain by your predictive inputs, and in quality/degree by the sophistication of your predictive algorithms, neither of which necessarily need more compute.
What is REALLY wrong with the GPT LLM approach, and why it can't just be scaled to achieve AGI, is that it is missing key architectural and algorithmic components (such as incremental learning, and a half dozen others), and perhaps more fundamentally that auto-regressive self-prediction is just the wrong approach. AGI needs to learn to act and predict the consequences of it's own actions - it needs to predict external inputs, not generative sequences.
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Expecting anything more is to defy logic and physics. What logic and physics are being defied by the assumption that intelligence doesn't require the specific biological machinery we are accustomed to? This is a ridiculous comment to make, you do nothing to actually prove the claims you're making, which are even stronger than the claims most people will make about the potential of AGI.
What logic and physics are being defied The logic and physics that make a computer what it is --- a binary logic playback device. By design, this is all it is capable of doing. Assuming a finite, inanimate computer can produce AGI is to assume that "intelligence" is nothing more than a binary logic algorithm. Currently, there is no logical basis for this assumption --- simply because we have yet to produce a logical…
> By design, this is all it is capable of doing. Assuming a finite, inanimate computer can produce AGI is [...]
Humans are also made up of a finite number of tiny particles moving around that would, on their own, not be considered living or intelligent.
> [...] we have yet to produce a logical definition of "intelligence". Of all people, programmers should understand that you can't program something that is not defined.
There are multiple definitions of intelligence, some mathematically formalized, usually centered around reasoning and adapting to new challenges.
There are also a variety of definitions for what makes an application "accessible", most not super precise, but that doesn't prevent me improving the application in ways such that it gradually meets more and more people's definitions of accessible.
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
So is the “binary” nature of today’s switches the core objection? We routinely simulate non-binary, continuous, and probabilistic systems using binary hardware. Neuroscientific models, fluid solvers, analog circuit simulators, etc., all run on the same “binary switches,” and produce behavior that cannot meaningfully be described as binary, only the substrate is.
Binary logic (aka a computer) can be used to model or simulate anything that has a clear mathematical definition. Currently, "intelligence" is lacking a clear mathematical definition.
> Currently, "intelligence" is lacking a clear mathematical definition.
On the contrary, there are many. You just don't like them. E.g. skill of prediction.
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to wonder whether people who make claims like that are confusing intelligence with consciousness. The claim as stated above could be a summary of a certain aspect of the hard problem of consciousness: that it's not clear how one could "coax consciousness out of a box of inanimate binary switches" - but the connection to "intelligence" is dubious. Unless of course one believes that "true" intelligence requires…
I believe that "intelligence" requires a clear mathematical definition in order to be simulated using binary logic. What do you believe?
That's an unreasonably high bar.
We already have irrefutable evidence of what can reasonably be called intelligence, from a functional perspective, from these models. In fact in many, many respects, the models outperform a majority of humans on many kinds of tasks requiring intelligence. Coding-related tasks are an especially good example.
Of course, they're not equivalent to humans in all respects, but there's no reason that should be a requirement for intelligence.
If anything, the onus lies on you to clarify what you think can't be achieved by these models, in principle.
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#36Whew, someone has some /new stans. A mostly Claude written piece of meandering navel gazing that tries to punch above its philosophical weight and fails.
> A mostly Claude written piece
I don't disagree with your overall assessment, but I'm curious about the basis for specific attribution to Claude?
Also if that's actually the case, it's incredibly ironic that we have a person who, presumably, is supposed to possess "intelligence", relying on a language model to help formulate and express their ideas about why models can't be intelligent.
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#37I was willing to give this a chance because maybe he meant it won't happen soon , but no he's actually saying it will never happen. Crazy.
Why is that idea "crazy", prima facie?
Because a) we know human-level intelligence is possible because we can directly observe it, b) GPU development has clearly slowed a lot but it hasn't stopped, c) even if it had stopped that doesn't mean they can never improve ever again, d) GPUs probably aren't the most efficient architecture for AI anyway so there are more opportunities for development even without process improvements, e) we're clearly not that far off AGI.
This is the sort of thing that might have made sense in 2005, not 2025.
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Expecting anything more is to defy logic and physics. What logic and physics are being defied by the assumption that intelligence doesn't require the specific biological machinery we are accustomed to? This is a ridiculous comment to make, you do nothing to actually prove the claims you're making, which are even stronger than the claims most people will make about the potential of AGI.
What logic and physics are being defied The logic and physics that make a computer what it is --- a binary logic playback device. By design, this is all it is capable of doing. Assuming a finite, inanimate computer can produce AGI is to assume that "intelligence" is nothing more than a binary logic algorithm. Currently, there is no logical basis for this assumption --- simply because we have yet to produce a logical…
Are you a programmer? Are you familiar with Alan Turing [0]?
What do you mean by finite, are you familiar with the halting problem? [1]
What does "inanimate" mean here? Have you seen a robot before?
Imprecise language negates your entire argument. You need to very precisely express your thoughts if you are to make such bold, fundamental claims.
While it's great that you're taking an interest in this subject, you're clearly speaking from a place of great ignorance, and it would serve you better to learn more about the things you're criticizing before making inflammatory, ill-founded claims. Especially when you start trying to tell a field expert that they don't know their own field.
Using handwavy words you don't seem to understand such as "finite" and "inanimate" while also claiming we don't have a "logical definition" (whatever that means) of intelligence just results in an incomprehensible argument.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
I tend to wonder whether people who make claims like that are confusing intelligence with consciousness. The claim as stated above could be a summary of a certain aspect of the hard problem of consciousness: that it's not clear how one could "coax consciousness out of a box of inanimate binary switches" - but the connection to "intelligence" is dubious. Unless of course one believes that "true" intelligence requires…
I believe that "intelligence" requires a clear mathematical definition in order to be simulated using binary logic. What do you believe?
You're ignoring the point of abstraction.
Intelligence can be expressed in higher order terms than the logic that the binary gates running the underlying software is required to account for.
Quarks don't need to account for atomic physics. Atomic physics doesn't need to account for chemistry. Chemistry doesn't need to account for materials science. It goes on and on. It's easy to look at a soup of quarks and go, "there's no way this soup of quarks could support my definition of intelligence!", but you go up the chain of abstraction and suddenly you've got a brain.
Scientists don't even understand yet where subjective consciousness comes into the picture. There are so many unanswered questions that it's preposterous to claim you know the answers without proof that extends beyond a handwavy belief.
Re: Why AGI Will Not Happen
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that idea "crazy", prima facie?
Because a) we know human-level intelligence is possible because we can directly observe it, b) GPU development has clearly slowed a lot but it hasn't stopped, c) even if it had stopped that doesn't mean they can never improve ever again , d) GPUs probably aren't the most efficient architecture for AI anyway so there are more opportunities for development even without process improvements, e) we're clearly not that fa…
I fully disagree on your point (e) and everything pretty much hinges on that.