There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence • Hacker News Board

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#131

Post by Balgair » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 5:13 PM UTC

sago wrote: post #33

I've been around AI since the end of the last big hype in the late 80s. The recent leap in machine learning has felt rather hyped to me. I don't think AGI is near. But I find myself agreeing with this article. Strongly. And I have long suspected that, we miss a lot of the significance and opportunities in AI, because we have only one exemplar of 'higher' intelligence: a human being. AI folk are so concerned with gett…

> The superhuman fallacy really is the bane of AI

Great point, I'll be stealing that one ;)

One annoyance I have heard about SV is that all the companies are just trying to replace your Jewish Mom: Uber/Lyft is Mom's minivan, GrubHub/DoorDash/BlueKitchen is Mom's cooking, Google is Mom's encylopedia, Yelp is the synagogue's meeting hallway, Tinder is your Mom's yenta, etc. The examples abound in a non-B2B space.

In that vein, then AGI is not just a Superman fallacy, but SuperMom too.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#132

Post by randomsearch » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 5:25 PM UTC

Can someone please explain what has happened in ML or AI that makes AGI closer? Whilst some practical results (image processing) have been impressive, the underlying conceptual frameworks have not really changed for 20 or 30 years. We're mostly seeing quantitive improvements (size of data, GPGPU), not qualitative insights.

ML in general is just applied statistics. That's not going to get you to AGI.

Deep Learning is just hand-crafted algorithms for very specific tasks, like computer vision, highy parameterised and tuned using a simple metaheuristic.

All we've done is achieve the "preprocessing" step of extracting features automatically from some raw data. It's super-impressive because we're so early in the development of Computing, but we are absolutely nowhere near AGI. We don't even have any insights as to where to begin to create intelligence rather than these preprocessing steps. Neuroscience doesn't even understand the basics of how a neuron works, but we do know that neurons are massively more complex than the trivial processing units used in Deep Learning.

Taking the other side for a moment, even if we're say 500 or 1000 years out (I'd guess What I find most frustrating about this debate is that a lot of people are once again massively overselling ML/DL, and that's going to cause disappointment and funding problems in the future. Industry and academia are both to blame, and it's this kind of nonsense that holds science back.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#133

Post by eli_gottlieb » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 5:33 PM UTC

sago wrote: post #33

I've been around AI since the end of the last big hype in the late 80s. The recent leap in machine learning has felt rather hyped to me. I don't think AGI is near. But I find myself agreeing with this article. Strongly. And I have long suspected that, we miss a lot of the significance and opportunities in AI, because we have only one exemplar of 'higher' intelligence: a human being. AI folk are so concerned with gett…

I'm fairly sure there isn't really such a thing as disembodied cognition. You have to build the fancy sciency stuff on top of the sensorimotor prediction-and-control stuff.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#134

Post by IanCal » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 5:49 PM UTC

kryptiskt wrote: post #46

IanCal wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's reasonable to think that a randomly selected elevator is safe enough to ride, while also thinking the one you've just seen have some kind of fault is not.

But why would an elevator that had demonstrated that it had a working safety brake like that be more unsafe than any other elevator? I trust in Elisha Otis.

A working safety break should be assumed to be the case, surely. Another, unknown fault not so.

All it really tells you is at least one thing is definitely wrong with the lift.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#135

Post by timthelion » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:01 PM UTC

stretchwithme wrote: post #125

JabavuAdams wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think 30 years will see a machine that can make dinner by gathering ingredients from a supermarket, driving home, and preparing the meal. Really? Why not? Once or twice, if we cherry-pick its performance, or reliably? This is really surprising to me.

It won't be a single machine. It will be multiple systems. And it's not that far away. Probably only 15 years. And it will be a great boon. Quality of meals will go up and costs will go down. The restaurant market will shrink but not completely disappear. But McDonald's will certainly die, as there'll be no need to sacrifice quality and nutrition to get speed and convenience. In fact, a table at McDonald's will be an…

McDonalds is that machine. All you need is to make the trucks that distribute the ingredients self driving and you have it.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#136

Post by ythn » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:09 PM UTC

ThomPete wrote: post #72

Humans evolved from immaterial matter to conscious carriers of information. The real question isn't whether AGI is possible but whether humans are the fittest carrier of information for our DNA and that seems to be technology in some shape or form helped by things like deep learning. My bet is always on evolution. And now that technology can learn it's IMO only a matter of time before we will experience another Cambr…

You read a lot of Sci-Fi, don't you?

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#137

Post by saurabh20n » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #132

Can someone please explain what has happened in ML or AI that makes AGI closer? Whilst some practical results (image processing) have been impressive, the underlying conceptual frameworks have not really changed for 20 or 30 years. We're mostly seeing quantitive improvements (size of data, GPGPU), not qualitative insights. ML in general is just applied statistics. That's not going to get you to AGI. Deep Learning is…

Agree. Deep learning does not bring us closer to AGI. It might get us closer to other proxies of "mechanical intelligence" that will be very productive.

I now believe we are 3 years from building an AI that writes Python well enough to build itself, based on some experiments I did recently: http://sparkz.org/ai/program-synthesis/2017/10/12/self-hosti...

Most technical people will understand the difference between programming and AGI. The general public might not.

The useful thing out of AGI discussions, is that they engage the general public.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#138

Post by zardo » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

randomsearch wrote: post #132

Can someone please explain what has happened in ML or AI that makes AGI closer? Whilst some practical results (image processing) have been impressive, the underlying conceptual frameworks have not really changed for 20 or 30 years. We're mostly seeing quantitive improvements (size of data, GPGPU), not qualitative insights. ML in general is just applied statistics. That's not going to get you to AGI. Deep Learning is…

>ML in general is just applied statistics. That's not going to get you to AGI.

I don't see how we can rule it out. The size of the statistical models we use are still dwarfed by the brains of intelligent animals, and we don't have any solid theory of intelligence to show how statistics comes up short as an explanation.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#139

Post by phs318u » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:13 PM UTC

rl3 wrote: post #64

sago wrote: post #33

I've been around AI since the end of the last big hype in the late 80s. The recent leap in machine learning has felt rather hyped to me. I don't think AGI is near. But I find myself agreeing with this article. Strongly. And I have long suspected that, we miss a lot of the significance and opportunities in AI, because we have only one exemplar of 'higher' intelligence: a human being. AI folk are so concerned with gett…

> The recent leap in machine learning has felt rather hyped to me. I don't think AGI is near. I've always thought it's never too early to start allocating significant resources to AGI research and safety given the potential impact. That said, I've up until very recently agreed with your take on the situation. What changed my mind was an article detailing the latest advances in silver nanowire mesh networks.[0] I knew…

Fascinating!

> the question then becomes how to architect and train it into an AGI.

If that’s the question then why even bother with silver nanowire “brains”? Why not just grow a human brain out of some suitable stem cells and work with that? Leaving aside the massive creepiness factor.

Re: There's No Fire Alarm for Artificial General Intelligence

#140

Post by gooseus » Sat, Oct 14, 2017, 6:20 PM UTC

johansch wrote: post #130

gooseus wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because we can observe something happening, doesn't mean we can understand the mechanisms of how that thing happens and even if we CAN understand the mechanism, it doesn't mean the mechanism is feasibly reproducible within our resource capability. An example might use crypto... you observe random information flying through the air, you may recognize it as an encrypted channel and you may see a machine acting in…

You're missing the point several times over. The entire point is very simple: if there is no magic involved it's down to physics. If it's possible to create brains without magic, it is possible to do so artificially.

I don't think I am... if a task is possible, but takes 100x the lifetime of the universe to accomplish, is it actually "possible"? Or is accomplishing that task the same as "magic"?

It I send a message using a one-time pad, the other person knows what I sent, you can ask questions and see that communication is actually happening... so if we're not using magic to communicate, it must be possible to communicate in the same way, right?

Yet it's mathmatically impossible to do so without access to hidden information (shared key)... no laws says that you can access that information, even with all the computational ability available in the universe.

The mechanisms and communication patterns of consciousness are similar, if it takes till the sun explodes to train a true AGI then aren't we just getting pedantic about what is possible/magic?