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Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

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Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#111
post #98

The belief that there is no fundamental difference between mammals navigating fractal dimensions and imprisoned electrons humming in logic gates has to be considered a religious one.

No, it's called functionalism. To me, it's actually the opposite, assuming there is a fundamental difference between simulated neurons and real ones seems almost religious.

While it's true that we aren't there yet, and simulated neurons are currently quite different from real ones (so I agree there is a big difference at the moment), it's unclear why you presumably think it will always stay that way.

Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#113
post #8

It still seems like something is missing from all these frameworks. I feel like an average human wouldn't pass some of these metrics yet they are "generally intelligent". On the other hand they also wouldn't pass a lot of the expert questions that AI is good at. We're measuring something, and I think optimizing it is useful, I'd even say it is "intelligent" in some ways, but it doesn't seem "intelligent" in the same…

If a human cares about the work, they can often outperform an LLM because they will keep at it until the work meets their standard of quality. Whereas the LLM will guess and then wait to be corrected. As a recent tweet I saw said: it’s amazing how fast the software bottleneck went from writing code, to reviewing code.

I think we’ll need to split the concept of intelligence into the capacity to accomplish a task and the capacity to conceive and prompt a task. If the former is called “intelligence” then LLMs are intelligent.

But what then do we call the latter? I think the idea of an AI that can independently accomplish great things is where people talk about “general” intelligence. But I think we need a label more specific, that covers this idea that successful humans are not just good at doing things, they originate what should be done and are not easy to dissuade.

Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#114
post #10

> Perception: extracting and processing sensory information from the environment > Generation: producing outputs such as text, speech and actions > Attention: focusing cognitive resources on what matters > Learning: acquiring new knowledge through experience and instruction > Memory: storing and retrieving information over time > Reasoning: drawing valid conclusions through logical inference > Metacognition: knowledg…

>a) working memory (hold & manipulate information in mind simultaneously) What counts as 'in mind' is undefined. You can succeed by declaring anything manipulatable counts as in. >c) fluid intelligence (ability to reason through novel problems without relying on prior knowledge) reasoning presupposes the conclusion. Solve is better. When a solution is given you cannot declare it to be not a solution. People can and d…

> I have aphantasia, why should you exclude something from being intelligent

Intelligence exists on a spectrum. Amongst different species (living and non-living) and also within species (amongst individuals).

Some dimensions of intelligence are more important that others in different contexts, so a systems that might be “dumber” than another in one context, can be smarter in a different context.

Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#115
post #51

When people imagined AI/AGI, they imagined something that can reason like we can, except at the speed of a computer, which we always envisioned would lead to the singularity. In a short period of time, AI would be so far ahead of us and our existing ideas, that the world would become unrecognizable. That's not what's happening here, and it's worth remembering: A caveman from 200K years ago would have been just as int…

> In a short period of time, AI would be so far ahead of us and our existing ideas, that the world would become unrecognizable. > That's not what's happening here ... On the contrary, it very much is. I'd argue AGI is already achieved via LLMs today, provided they've excellent external cognitive infrastructure supporting. However, the gap from AGI to ASI is perhaps longer than anticipated such that we're not seeing a…

Ah yes, the 0.50$/h support infrastructure from the places that cannot refuse the deal. "frontier" LLMs currently cosplay a dunk with google and late alzheimer's. Surely, they speed up brute-forcing correct answer a lot by trying more likely texts. And? This overfed markov chain doesn't need supporing infrastructure — it IS supporting infastructure, for the cognitive something that is not being worked on prominently, because all resources are needed to feed the markov chain.

The silence surrounding new LLM architectures is so loud that an abomination like "claw" gets prime airtime. Meanwhile models keep being released. Maybe the next one will be the lucky draw. It was pure luck, finding out how well LLMs scale, in the first place. Why shouldn't the rest of progress be luck driven too?

Kerbal AGI program...

Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#116
post #99
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The claim that books know things seems suspicious to me. I consider the act of knowing to be embodied, it is something a person has learned to do and has control over. Is that how you approach PDF files? Do you feel it in your bones that these flows of bytes are knowing?

> The claim that books know things seems suspicious to me I didn't say the book knows things, but everyone can agree that books has knowledge in them. Hence something possessing knowledge doesn't make it intelligent. For example, when ancient libraries were burnt those civilizations lost a lot of knowledge. Those books possessed knowledge, it isn't a hard concept to understand. Those civilizations didn't lose intelli…

Would you consider taking a dump and then butchering an animal and then eating without washing your hands first, to be an issue of intelligence or knowledge?

The whole thing about washing hands comes from (some approximation of) germ theory of illness, and in practice, it actually just boils down to stories of other people practicing hygiene. So if one's answer here isn't "knowledge", it needs some serious justification.

Expanding that: can you think of things that are "intelligence" that cannot be reduced like this to knowledge (or combination of knowledge + social expectations)?

I think in some sense, separating knowledge and intelligence is as dumb a confusion of ideas as separating "code" and "data" (doesn't stop half the industry from believing them to be distinct thing). But I'm willing to agree that hardware-wise, humans today and those from 10 000 years ago, are roughly the same, so if you teleported an infant from 8000 BC to this day, they'd learn to function in our times without a problem. Adults are another thing, brains aren't CPUs, the distinction between software and hardware isn't as clear in vivo as it is in silico, due to properties of the computational medium.

Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#117
post #46

When people imagined AI/AGI, they imagined something that can reason like we can, except at the speed of a computer, which we always envisioned would lead to the singularity. In a short period of time, AI would be so far ahead of us and our existing ideas, that the world would become unrecognizable. That's not what's happening here, and it's worth remembering: A caveman from 200K years ago would have been just as int…

How do you arrive at the statement that a cavemen would have the same intelligence as a human today? Intelligence is surely not usually defined as the cognitive potential at birth but as the current capability. And the knowledge an average human has today through education surely factors into that.

It's even sillier than that. You can look at populations in the modern world and see there are huge differences in intelligence due to various factors such as cousin marriage and nutrition.

Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#119
post #88
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The knowledge that everything is made out of atoms/molecules however makes it much easier to reason about your environment. And based on this knowledge you also learn algorithms, how to solve problems etc. I dont think its possible to completely separate knowledge from intelligence.

But an intelligent being could learn that, do you think they become more intelligent if you tell them things are made out of atoms? To me the answer is very simple, no they don't become more intelligent.

Yes, intelligence can be influenced by training(and other things).

Re: Measuring progress toward AGI: A cognitive framework

#120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of things LLMs can do is insane. It's interesting to me how much effort the AI companies (and bloggers) put into claiming they can do things they can't, when there's almost an unlimited list of things they actually can do.

This reminds me of "Devin". You know, the first "AI software engineer", which had the hype of the day but turned into a huge flop. They had ridiculous demos of Devin e.g. working as a freelancer and supposedly earning money from it.

It looks like the company (Cognition) is actively hiring (20+ job openings last I checked). That doesn't sound like a "flop" to me...
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