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The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

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Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#391

Post by godelski »

nomel wrote: post #385
godelski wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue it's so vague it's already nonsensical. Can we not declare Google (search) AGI? It sure does a hell of a lot of stuff better than any human I now. Same with the calculator in my desk drawer. Even by broom does a far better job sweeping than I do. My hands just aren't made for sweeping. But to extend your point, I think we really need to be explicit about the assumptions being made. Everyone loves to say int…

I think you're conflating "knowledge" with "intelligence". And, "agency" seems to be a missing concept, which is the only way for something intelligent to apply its knowledge to achieve something practical, on its own. Google search can't achieve anything practical, because it has no agency. It has no agency partly because it doesn't have the required intelligence to do anything on its own, other than display results…

  > I think you're conflating "knowledge" with "intelligence"
A calculator is not doing calculations through knowledge. It actually performs computation. It is not doing a database lookup.

  > And, "agency" seems to be a missing concept,

  >> I think we really need to be explicit about the assumptions being made
Agency was never mentioned. Thanks for being more explicit ;)

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#392

Post by godelski »

nomel wrote: post #382
godelski wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I assumed the comment was clear, with your comment above. Here's what I meant: > By your definition every machine has a type of general intelligence. Not just a bog standard calculator, but also my broom. I really don't know of any human that can out perform a standard calculator at calculations. I'm sure there are humans that can beat them in some cases, but clearly the calculator is a better generalized nume…

I'm using the dictionary definition of "general": > General: 1. affecting or concerning all or most people, places, or things; widespread. To me, a general intelligence is one that is not just specific: it's affecting or concerning all or most areas of intelligence. A calculator is a very specific, very inflexible, type of intelligence, so it's not, by definition, general. And, I'm not talking about the indirect appl…

  > To me, a general intelligence is one that is not just specific
Which is why a calculator is a great example.

  > A calculator is a very specific, very inflexible, type of intelligence, so it's not, by definition, general
Depends what kind of calculator and what you mean. I think they are far more flexible than you give them credit for.

  > I'm in hardware engineering, so maybe I have a different perspective, but goals based on outcome are the only ones that actually matter, especially if nobody has done it before.
Well if we're going to talk about theoretical things, why dismiss the people who do theory? There's a lot of misunderstandings when it comes to the people that create the foundations everyone is standing on.

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#393

Post by wolvesechoes »

palmotea wrote: post #368
atomicnumber3 wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, not enough of a joke. I was thinking something similar - this isn't AI, and none of "those people" care if it is or isn't. They don't care philosophically, or even pragmatically. They're selling a product. That product is the IDEA of replacement of the majority of human labor with what's basically slave labor but with substantially disregardable ethical quandaries. It's honestly a genius product. I'm not su…

> I'm vaguely surprised so many people who don't stand to benefit in any way shape or form, or who will even potentially starve if it works out, are so keen on it. But there are always bootlickers. I've been getting more and more disappointed by software engineers (in aggregate) as the years go by. They don't even have to be bootlickers to do what you describe, I think a lot of it is pride in their "intelligence," wh…

> I've been getting more and more disappointed by software engineers (in aggregate) as the years go by

Sometimes I am dismayed by the lack of political and social consciousness in this group. Decade or two of digital boom coupled with handsome paychecks was enough to convince them that their position is different than it really is.

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#394

Post by ghoblin »

casey2 wrote: post #366
ghoblin wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone cites some niche "human-only" jobs to argue AI won't replace labor. But most of the economy runs on things like document processing, logistics, retail, and factories. High-volume, repeatable, rule-driven tasks, and in those areas, we're already on the brink of full automation. Autonomous retail stores, delivery fleets, and smart factories are either here or imminent. It's not about AI scratching backs, it's…

You're describing valueless automation. We can build an assembly line and mass produce cars, that only has value if society is restructured. The food delivery industry only moves a trillion (globally) because it's incredibly wasteful, not due to value. Most of the value in going to a restaurant was in the experience and culture, the food is just a blend of fats, carbs and protein, but you pay more for the "luxury" of…

Energy is just one component of cost per unit of work, and in most modern economies it's a very small one. Industry has always traded energy efficiency for productivity. Excavators burn huge amounts of fuel compared to humans with shovels, data centers consume megawatts compared to the brain's ~20W, and forklifts are nowhere near biologically efficient. They still win because the economic cost per unit of work is lower.

In the case of AI the key difference is how the systems scale. Human labor scales linearly: if you want 10x more output, you hire 10x more workers, and the cost scales roughly the same. A human brain might run on ~20W, but each worker is still €20–€50+ per hour and can only do one task at a time. AI systems scale more like software infrastructure. Once the model and servers exist, the marginal cost of additional tasks is mostly compute and electricity. A data center might burn far more energy than a human brain per task, but it can handle thousands or millions of tasks in parallel and run 24/7. The cost per task can end up being cents even if the system is much less energy efficient "per brain".

Labor is expensive because you're not just paying for the task. You're paying for the worker's entire life infrastructure. Wages have to cover housing, food, healthcare, transportation, retirement, taxes, etc.., So the price of labor largely reflects the cost of sustaining a human being in society, not just the marginal cost of performing the work

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#395

Post by randyrand »

stavros wrote: post #256
dataflow wrote: post #10

It's clever and funny, but nobody is legitimately near AGI, and their own AML Corp link proves Altman believes as much: > Achieving AGI, he conceded, will require “a lot of medium-sized breakthroughs. I don’t think we need a big one.” > At the Snowflake Summit in June 2025, Altman predicted that 2026 would mark a breakthrough when AI systems begin generating “novel insights” rather than simply recombining existing in…

We're not near AGI? Personally, I think we've passed it, given that LLMs are now generally more competent than the average person on average.

It’s artificial, it’s general, and all things considered it’s pretty damn intelligent.

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#396

Post by fwipsy »

fwip wrote: post #121
fwipsy wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given how many "fundamental" limitations of AI have been resolved within the past few years, I'm skeptical. Even if you're right, I am not sure that the limitations you identified matter all that much in practice. I think very few human engineers are working on problems which are so novel and unique that AIs cannot grasp them without additional reinforcement learning. > it will delete all the files in "X/" How many "…

> How many "I deleted the prod database" stories have you seen? Humans do this too. Humans generally do it on accident. They don't preface it with "Let me delete the production database," which LLMs do.

Hey, you're the guy who got the username I wanted. Hell of a coincidence

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#397

Post by dragonwriter »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #390
dllthomas wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you learned that a piece of the brain where meaningful computation takes place was stateless, would that cause you to question whether the human mind was "highly autonomous"?

Good question. I don't know enough about neuroscience to really answer your question in depth. My opinion, uninformed as it is, is basically around the intuitive reasoning that something cannot be "highly autonomous" if it has to be kicked every second ;) Autonomous is defined as not needing to be controlled externally. And coupling that part with something as simple as cron job doesn't solve that in any meaningful w…

It seems to me that you are trying to define "autonomy" as a structural property rather than a behavioral one, and then adopting arbitrary rules as to what structures do not count as autonomous whether or not they produce the same behavior as structures which do.

I guess that's fine, autonomy has lots of definitions (some in overlapping domains) and I guess one more doesn't hurt, but I'm pretty sure the intended use in the discussion here is the standard mechanical one where it is a behavioral trait defined by the capacity of a system to decide on action without the involvement of another system or operator, and therefore it is something that could be achieved by a system composed of a processing and action component called repeatedly by a looping component.

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#398

Post by dllthomas »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #390
dllthomas wrote: post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you learned that a piece of the brain where meaningful computation takes place was stateless, would that cause you to question whether the human mind was "highly autonomous"?

Good question. I don't know enough about neuroscience to really answer your question in depth. My opinion, uninformed as it is, is basically around the intuitive reasoning that something cannot be "highly autonomous" if it has to be kicked every second ;) Autonomous is defined as not needing to be controlled externally. And coupling that part with something as simple as cron job doesn't solve that in any meaningful w…

I think I'd say that the batch file is not itself autonomous but the system as a whole is autonomous (if limited) but I'm not prepared to argue that's the correct definition.

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#399

Post by irishcoffee »

nomel wrote: post #386
irishcoffee wrote: post #384

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is a run-down of how an LLM works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_language_model > Do you know how the human brain works? That science is still in its infancy but that's not stopped us. Stopped us from doing what exactly?

I think a charitable interpretation of their comment is that it hasn't stopped us from practical, fruitful, use. We didn't need an understanding of how it worked, or even a word for intelligence , let alone a definition of it, to get good practical results.

It’s a statistical gradient descent prediction machine. I never said it wasn’t useful. It absolutely isn’t smart.

Re: The changing goalposts of AGI and timelines

#400

Post by nomel »

godelski wrote: post #392
nomel wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm using the dictionary definition of "general": > General: 1. affecting or concerning all or most people, places, or things; widespread. To me, a general intelligence is one that is not just specific: it's affecting or concerning all or most areas of intelligence. A calculator is a very specific, very inflexible, type of intelligence, so it's not, by definition, general. And, I'm not talking about the indirect appl…

> To me, a general intelligence is one that is not just specific Which is why a calculator is a great example. > A calculator is a very specific, very inflexible, type of intelligence, so it's not, by definition, general Depends what kind of calculator and what you mean. I think they are far more flexible than you give them credit for. > I'm in hardware engineering, so maybe I have a different perspective, but goals…

> And, I'm not talking about the indirect applications of a calculator or a specific intelligence.

This was an attempt to prevent this exact chain of response.

I calculator can only be used indirectly to solve a practical problem. A more general intelligence is required to know a calculator is needed, and how to break down the problem in a way that a calculator can be used effectively.

For example, you can't solve any real world problem with a calculator, beyond holding some papers down, or maybe keeping a door open. But, an engineer (or other general intelligence) with a calculator can solve real world problems with it. Tools vs tool users. The user is the general bit, not the specific tool that's useless on its own!

I think we've reached the limits of communication. Cheers!

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