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Why did this get flagged?
Sure, that's a sensible stance to take... assuming that there will be no further technological development.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is that idea "crazy", prima facie?
Because a) we know human-level intelligence is possible because we can directly observe it, b) GPU development has clearly slowed a lot but it hasn't stopped, c) even if it had stopped that doesn't mean they can never improve ever again , d) GPUs probably aren't the most efficient architecture for AI anyway so there are more opportunities for development even without process improvements, e) we're clearly not that fa…
Much better in my opinion is Hans Moravec's 1997 paper "When will computer hardware match the human brain?" which seems quite solid in it's reasoning - he was a roboticist and spending time trying to make robots do things like vision and given at the time they understood the retina quite well he could compare the amount of compute needed to do something equivalent to a given volume of neurons and then multiply up by the size of the brain. Conclusions were
> human brain is about 100,000 times as large as the retina, suggesting that matching overall human behavior will take about 100 million MIPS of computer power
100 TFLOPS roughly. Or similar to a top graphics card now. Also:
> Based on extrapolation of past trends and on examination of technologies under development, it is predicted that the required hardware will be available in cheap machines in the 2020s.
which seems to have come to pass. I think we don't have AGI yet because the LLM algorithms are very inefficient and not right for the job - it was more a language translation algorithm that surprised people by getting quite smart if you threw huge compute and the whole internet at it.
(Moravec's paper which is not a bad read https://jetpress.org/volume1/moravec.pdf)
It also has
>This paper describes how the performance of AI machines tends to improve at the same pace that AI researchers get access to faster hardware.
My guess is that will come to pass. AI researchers have the hardware and the software will improve shortly.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because a) we know human-level intelligence is possible because we can directly observe it, b) GPU development has clearly slowed a lot but it hasn't stopped, c) even if it had stopped that doesn't mean they can never improve ever again , d) GPUs probably aren't the most efficient architecture for AI anyway so there are more opportunities for development even without process improvements, e) we're clearly not that fa…
Correction: (a) we can observe the effects of human-level intelligence but we don't actually know what human intelligence is because intelligence is best described as a side-effect of consciousness (aka the experience of qualia) and science has yet to provide a convincing explanation of what that is exactly.
Is "human intelligence" and "intelligence" equal?
And: How to become conscious before being intelligent?
Or: If intelligence is a side-effect, how often this side-effect can't be observed?
Xor: What if an intelligent being denies being conscious?
This has always been the issue. This is an argument I made more than 20 years ago. AGI, whatever it is as a technical problem, is mainly a TESTING problem. If you don’t solve that, then AGI is remains a matter of faith. A cult.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because a) we know human-level intelligence is possible because we can directly observe it, b) GPU development has clearly slowed a lot but it hasn't stopped, c) even if it had stopped that doesn't mean they can never improve ever again , d) GPUs probably aren't the most efficient architecture for AI anyway so there are more opportunities for development even without process improvements, e) we're clearly not that fa…
Correction: (a) we can observe the effects of human-level intelligence but we don't actually know what human intelligence is because intelligence is best described as a side-effect of consciousness (aka the experience of qualia) and science has yet to provide a convincing explanation of what that is exactly.
One analogy for this is cars. We found out it’s enough to pave a network of roads for “good enough” cars, even though there are still pipe dreams about supercar so flexible it can navigate any terrain.
The issue might be that the West is delaying building the road infrastructure waiting for that AGI supercar to happen.
(Military might care about the latter though, but in reality, drones and quadrupeds and tanks will be a better choice.)
Believing we even know what AGI "is", let alone that we understand a direct path to achieving it, is truly an article of faith. There is no scientific basis for a development of human-level intelligence within our lifetimes, let alone the buzzword du jour of "superintelligence".
Whether the AGI that they announce is actually AGI or not is a completely different debate. The goalposts will just continue to be moved until the statement is true.