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Why I don't think AGI is imminent

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Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#221

Post by hackable_sand »

znnajdla wrote: post #131
hi_hi wrote: post #63

Here's a thought. Lets all arbitrarily agree AGI is here. I can't even be bothered discussing what the definition of AGI is. It's just here, accept it. Or vice versa. Now what....? Whats happening right now that should make me care that AGI is here (or not). Whats the magic thing thats happening with AGI that wasn't happening before? Right, so, not much has changed from 1-2 years ago that I can tell. The job markets…

I've been writing code for 20 years. AI has completely changed my life and the way I write code and run my business. Nothing is the same anymore, and I feel I will be saying that again by the end of 2026. My productive output as a programmer in software and business have expanded 3x *compounding monthly*.

It's weird that you guys keep posting the same comments with the exact same formatting

You're not fooling anyone

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#222

Post by mapt »

deafpolygon wrote: post #211
hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If AGI is already here actions would be so greatly accelerated humans wouldn’t have time to respond. Remember that weather balloon the US found a few years ago that for days was on the news as a Chinese spy balloon? Well whether it was a spy balloon or a weather balloon but the first hint of its existence could have triggered a nuclear war that could have already been the end of the world as we know it because AGI wi…

AGI is not a death sentence for humanity. It all depends on who leverages the tool. And in any case, AGI won’t be here for decades to come.

Your sentence seems to imply that we will delegate all AI decisions to one person who can decide how he wants to use it - to build or destroy.

Strong agentic AIs are a death sentence memo pad (or a malevolent djinn lamp if you like) that anyone can write on, because the tools will be freely available to leverage. A plutonium breeder reactor in every backyard. Try not to think of paperclips.

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#223

Post by expedition32 »

graemep wrote: post #213
materielle wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really think corporations are overplaying their hand if they think they can transform society once again in the next 10 years. Rapid de industrialization followed by the internet and social media almost broke our society. Also, I don’t think people necessarily realize how close we were to the cliff in 2007. I think another transformation now would rip society apart rather than take us to the great beyond.

You are assuming that the change can only happen in the west. The rest of the world has mostly been experiencing industrialisation, and was only indirectly affected by the great crash. If there is a transformation in the rest of the world the west cannot escape it. A lot of people in the west seem to have their heads in the sand, very much like when Japan and China tried to ignore the west. China is the world's secon…

When I look at my own country it has proven to be open to change. There are people alive today who remember Christianity now we swear in a gay prime minister.

In that sense Western countries have proven that they are intellectualy very nimble.

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#224

Post by hackyhacky »

expedition32 wrote: post #223
graemep wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are assuming that the change can only happen in the west. The rest of the world has mostly been experiencing industrialisation, and was only indirectly affected by the great crash. If there is a transformation in the rest of the world the west cannot escape it. A lot of people in the west seem to have their heads in the sand, very much like when Japan and China tried to ignore the west. China is the world's secon…

When I look at my own country it has proven to be open to change. There are people alive today who remember Christianity now we swear in a gay prime minister. In that sense Western countries have proven that they are intellectualy very nimble.

> people alive today who remember Christianity now we swear in a gay prime minister

Why would that be a contradiction? Gay people can't be Christian?

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#225

Post by krethh »

geoelectric wrote: post #189
shaky-carrousel wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What that model is going to do in 2 years is replace tech debt with more complicated tech debt.

One could argue that's a cynically accurate definition of most iterative development anyway. But I don't know that I accept the core assertion. If the engineer is screening the output and using the LLM to generate tests, chances are pretty good it's not going to be worse than human-generated tech debt. If there's more accumulated, it's because there's more output in general.

Only if you accept the premise that the code generated by LLMs is identical to the developer's output in quality, just higher in volume. In my lived professional experience, that's not the case.

It seems to me that prompting agents and reviewing the output just doesn't.... trigger the same neural pathways for people? I constantly see people submit agent generated code with mistakes they would have never made themselves when "handwriting" code.

Until now, the average PR had one author and a couple reviewers. From now on, most PRs will have no authors and only reviewers. We simply have no data about how this will impact both code quality AND people's cognitive abilities over time. If my intuition is correct, it will affect both negatively over time. It remains to be seen. It's definitely not something that the AI hyperenthusiasts think at all about.

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#226

Post by armoredkitten »

hshdhdhj4444 wrote: post #204
hi_hi wrote: post #63

Here's a thought. Lets all arbitrarily agree AGI is here. I can't even be bothered discussing what the definition of AGI is. It's just here, accept it. Or vice versa. Now what....? Whats happening right now that should make me care that AGI is here (or not). Whats the magic thing thats happening with AGI that wasn't happening before? Right, so, not much has changed from 1-2 years ago that I can tell. The job markets…

If AGI is already here actions would be so greatly accelerated humans wouldn’t have time to respond. Remember that weather balloon the US found a few years ago that for days was on the news as a Chinese spy balloon? Well whether it was a spy balloon or a weather balloon but the first hint of its existence could have triggered a nuclear war that could have already been the end of the world as we know it because AGI wi…

You're talking about superintelligence. AGI is just...an AI that's roughly on par with humans on most things. There's no inherent reason why AGI will lead to ASI.

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#227

Post by pendenthistory »

xutopia wrote: post #52

I’m under the same impression. I don’t think LLMs are the path to AGI. The “intelligence” we see is mostly illusory. It’s statistical repetition of the mediocre minds who wrote content online. The intelligence we think we recognize is simply an electronic parrot finding the right words in its model to make itself useful.

I don't see how you can come to that conclusion if you've actually used e.g. Opus 4.6 on a hard problem. Either you're not using it, or you're not using it right. And I don't mean simple web dev stuff. In a few hours Claude built me a fairly accurate physics simulation for a game I've been working on. It searched for research papers, grabbed constants for the different materials, implemented the tests and the physics and... it worked. It would have taken me weeks. Yes, I guided it here and there, especially by telling it about various weird physics behavior that I observed, but I didn't write one line of code.

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#229

Post by al_borland »

nsainsbury wrote: post #33

I used to also believe along these lines but lately I'm not so sure. I'm honestly shocked by the latest results we're seeing with Gemini 3 Deep Think, Opus 4.6, and Codex 5.3 in math, coding, abstract reasoning, etc. Deep Think just scored 84.6% on ARC-AGI-2 ( https://deepmind.google/models/gemini/ )! And these benchmarks are supported by my own experimentation and testing with these models ~ specifically most recent…

> These models are demonstrating an incredible capacity for logical abstract reasoning of a level far greater than 99.9% of the world's population.

And yet they have trouble knowing that a person should take their car to a car wash.

I also saw a college professor who put various AI models through all his exams for a freshman(?) level class. Most failed, I think one barely passed, if I remember correctly.

I’ve been reading about people being shocked by how good things are for years now, but while there may be moments of what seems like incredible brilliance, there are also moments of profound stupidity. AI optimists seem to ignore these moments, but they very real.

If someone on my team performed like AI, I wouldn’t trust them with anything.

Re: Why I don't think AGI is imminent

#230

Post by dyauspitr »

hi_hi wrote: post #63

Here's a thought. Lets all arbitrarily agree AGI is here. I can't even be bothered discussing what the definition of AGI is. It's just here, accept it. Or vice versa. Now what....? Whats happening right now that should make me care that AGI is here (or not). Whats the magic thing thats happening with AGI that wasn't happening before? Right, so, not much has changed from 1-2 years ago that I can tell. The job markets…

The economy is shit if you’re anything except a nurse or providing care to old people.
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