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Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

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Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#321
post #51
post #13

The other few things possible in next few years for past few years are: 1. Fusion 2. Self driving cars. 3. Ubiquitous, generally available and stable 8192 bit quantum computers. 4. High energy density grid scale batteries. Just few more "this maybe the... what could revolutionize..." articles away. What we forget is that it is in these people's business interest (executives making such statements) to state the exagge…

Grid scale energy storage is basically solved once you realize that hydrogen storage is an option already. It's in the same boat as when photovoltaics got very cheap, but skeptics continued to deny that possibility for some years afterwards.

Isn't hydrogen extremely hard to store over a long period of time ? (Seasonal)

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#322
post #203
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a point with #4. Grid scale batteries don’t need to be “high energy density” like EVs. I would argue that cost is probably the biggest factor, and it’s already across the cost/benefit barrier in many markets.

This. It surprises me every time when battery or any "green" technology is discussed here and 90% of Americans keep parroting Trump's talking points. For example one of the comments above is talking about how EVs are just "a rich boy's toy".

In fairness EVs still are more expensive than petrol cars. I'm hoping this will change though

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#323
post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to propose a "if it quacks like a duck" scenario here (aka the Chinese Room), and applying it to people who are mistaken or acting on incorrect information. Those people are reasoning , however rightly or wrongly, based on that wrong information. LLMs are not.

We do not have sufficient knowledge of what reasoning entails to be able to tell whether there's any meaningful distinction between human reasoning and LLMs. It's likely there is some difference. It's not clear whether there's any major qualitative difference. Claiming we can tell that there's a distinction that merits saying people are reasoning and LLMs are not, is "hallucination" to me. It's making a claim there i…

It may be true that we don't have a real fundamental understanding of what human reasoning involves but I think we can be pretty certain that it's something different from just stringing words together.

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#324
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everything in the universe must by definition be rational. Chemical reactions always happen a certain way, physics always works a certain way, numbers add up the same every time. If something seems irrational, that's because there are rational things layered on top of one another in a way that creates a misapprehension in a partially-informed observer.

Quantum effects don't. There are rules but results are within range random.

Quantum mechanics works the same way every time. Being random doesn't mean they're not working the same way every time, the distribution never changes.

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#325
post #13

The other few things possible in next few years for past few years are: 1. Fusion 2. Self driving cars. 3. Ubiquitous, generally available and stable 8192 bit quantum computers. 4. High energy density grid scale batteries. Just few more "this maybe the... what could revolutionize..." articles away. What we forget is that it is in these people's business interest (executives making such statements) to state the exagge…

were we ever promised high-speed (fiber) internet everywhere or was that always a pipe dream?

That's heavily dependent on where you live. We're getting high speed internet pretty much everywhere in France. It's a program full of controversies, but here I am in a 3k inhabitant village with a 10gbps connection for 40€ a month... (Yes, 10Gbps, I'm throttled by my gigabit ethernet)

If you can't get fiber here you get a subsidised 4G / 5G router for a very reasonable price.

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. Let’s take quantum theory. There are lots of concepts that are based in math but can be reasoned about non-mathematically. The reason that chatGPT can write quantum computer programs to in any domain (despite the lack of existing programs!) is because it can deal with the concepts of quantum computing and the concepts in a domain (eg, predicting housing prices) and align them. Very little of human reasoning is…

Now you are making things up

Adding quantum to whatever you are doing always makes it better!

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#327
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know. Having interacted with LLMs at different levels, they resemble a very sophisticated, alien intelligence trying to pretend to be human. It's like me pretending to be a dog; even if I were to emulate a dog perfectly, I wouldn't have the same emotions; I'd be pretending. We have no idea what emotions, motivations, behaviors, or goals AIs have, will have, or if they'll have something as of yet unconvinced t…

> We have no idea what emotions, motivations, behaviors, or goals AIs have, will have, or if they'll have something as of yet unconvinced that's not emotions or motivations, but just alien. AIs don't have emotions, motivations or goals. They don't pretend, because pretending implies intent, they don't have intent. They do what they're created to do. Humans are already brainwashed consumers. Welcome to marketing/adver…

The level of confidence both sides give here is not warranted. We have no idea about what internal structures emerged within LLMs. We only know outer behavior.

From a humanist / secular perspective, humans evolved to make babies. Emotions are an emergent behavior to maximize the number of babies made, and their survival. Nothing less, and nothing more.

What analogues emerge when we train machines not to survive but to complete text?

We have no idea.

There's the "ghost in the machine" crowd, the sentient machine crowd, and the mechanical machine crowd. None have presented any compelling evidence, but all speak with complete confidence in their hypotheses.

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#328
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A nearly omnipotent AI could probably get close to light speed, which would allow it to reach all edges of the galaxy in 100,000 or so years.

That's assuming the AI really wants to make a lot of paperclips though

I'd say a hallmark of an intelligent agent is knowledge seeking. You can only learn so much without venturing out into space.

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's amazing at words . Humans use words to encode concepts, but ChatGPT doesn't get the concepts at all - just words and their relationships. To the extent that humans have encoded the concepts into words, and that text is in the training set, to that degree ChatGPT can work with the words in a way that is at least somewhat true to the concepts encoded in them. But it doesn't actually understand any of the conce…

I disagree. If you play around with ChatGPT4 enough you can see it understands the concept. That is, it's able to model it and draw inferences from the model in a way that's impossible through just words and their relationships. "Sparks of AGI" paper gives some good examples, for instance where it's asked to balance a book, 9 eggs, a laptop, a bottle and a nail. I recently asked it to design a plan for a bathroom. It…

> These things are not possible with just words

I don't think this is the case at all. Language is how we encode and communicate ideas/concepts/practicalities; with sufficient data, the links are extractable just from the text.

Re: Google DeepMind CEO says some form of AGI possible in a few years

#330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I asked it about that chord and it told me it was an F diminished 7th chord. I asked it what a d flat major chord was and it told me. I then asked it what the relationship between the two was. It didnt catch it immediately but when I told it to think about inversions it got it. So it gave you a wrong answer and when you spelled out the correct answer it said "OK" x) Was that it? Or am I missing something.

it gave me a correct answer (but not the one GP expected), and then I asked it about another chord GP wanted it to say (D flat major) which can be stylistically replaced with this one (by "inverting" the top note). I asked it what the relationship between the two was and it told me about how they're used in songwriting correctly (gave information about the emotions they invoke and how they resolve to other chords), b…

A diminished 7th above F is B, not B flat. Also a 7th chord is understood to be a triad plus the 7th (and therefore the diminished 5th above the F is also missing). Unless I'm missing something it did indeed produce a wrong answer.
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