Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AGI is far from inevitable

ru.nl

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 258 posts

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#21

Post by stroupwaffle »

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 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.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#22

Post by Moosdijk »

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.

The keyword being “just”.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#23

Post by diob »

sharadov wrote: post #3

The current LLMs are just good at parroting, and even that is sometimes unbelievably bad. We still have barely scratched the surface of how the brain truly works. I will start worrying about AGI when that is completely figured out.

No need to worry about AGI until the LLMs are writing their own source.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#24

Post by nox101 »

fabian2k wrote: post #9
ngruhn wrote: post #8

> There will never be enough computing power to create AGI using machine learning that can do the same [as the human brain], because we’d run out of natural resources long before we'd even get close I don’t understand how people can so confidently make claims like this. We might underestimate how difficult AGI is, but come on?!

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'll have AGI because unlike brain we can make our copy bigger, faster, and/or copy it. We can give it access to more info faster and more inputs.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#25

Post by fnordpiglet »

gqcwwjtg wrote: post #17

This is silly. They article talks like we have any idea at all how efficient machine learning can be. As I remember it, the LLM boom came from transformers turning out to scale a lot better than anyone expected, so I’m not sure why something similar couldn’t happen again.

It’s less about efficiency and more about continued improvement with increased scale. I wouldn’t call self attention based transformers particularly efficient. And afaik we’ve not hit performance with increased scale degradation even at these enormous scales.

However I would note that I in principle agree that we aren’t on the path to a human like intelligence because the difference between directed cognition (or however you want to characterize current LLMs or other AI) and awareness is extreme. We don’t really understand even abstractly what awareness actually is because it’s impossible to interrogate unlike expressive language, logic, even art. It’s far from obvious to me that we can use language or other outputs of our intelligent awareness to produce awareness, or even if goal based agents cobbling together AI techniques is even approximate to awareness.

I suspect we will end up creating an amazing tool that has its own form of intelligence but will fundamentally not be like aware intelligence we are familiar with in humans and other animals. But this is all theorizing on my part as a professional practitioner in this field.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#26

Post by KoolKat23 »

babyshake wrote: post #7
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.

It's possible we see some ways in which AI becomes increasingly AGI like in some ways but not in others. For example, AI that can create novel scientific discoveries but can't make a song as good as your favorite musician who creates a strong emotional effect with their music.

This I'm very sure will be the case, but everyone will still move the goalposts and look past the fact that different humans have different strengths and weaknesses too. A tone deaf human for instance.

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#28

Post by umvi »

fabian2k wrote: post #9
ngruhn wrote: post #8

> There will never be enough computing power to create AGI using machine learning that can do the same [as the human brain], because we’d run out of natural resources long before we'd even get close I don’t understand how people can so confidently make claims like this. We might underestimate how difficult AGI is, but come on?!

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't exist, AGI must be possible because we are AGI agents" in order to be true

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#29

Post by ggm »

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 grow, just connect, just sustain, just avoid the many pitfalls. Indeed just is key

Re: AGI is far from inevitable

#30

Post by Terr_ »

ngruhn wrote: post #8

> There will never be enough computing power to create AGI using machine learning that can do the same [as the human brain], because we’d run out of natural resources long before we'd even get close I don’t understand how people can so confidently make claims like this. We might underestimate how difficult AGI is, but come on?!

I think their qualifier "using machine learning" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here in terms of what it implies about continuing an existing engineering approach, cost of material, energy usage, etc.

In contrast, imagine the scenario of AGI using artificial but biological neurons.

Post reply on HN