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AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

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Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#61

Post by tshaddox »

marcosdumay wrote: post #42
epiccoleman wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would that really be a physics discovery? I mean I guess everything ultimately is. But it seems like maybe consciousness could be understood in terms of "higher level" sciences - somewhere on the chain of neurology->biology->chemistry->physics.

> Would that really be a physics discovery? No, it could be something that proves all of our fundamental mathematics wrong. The GP just gave the more conservative option.

I’m not sure what you mean. This new discovery in mathematics would also necessarily tell us something new about what is computable, which is physics.

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#62

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

tshaddox wrote: post #21
glitchc wrote: post #10

We don't know if AGI is even possible outside of a biological construct yet. This is key. Can we land on AGI without some clear indication of possibility (aka Chappie style)? Possibly, but the likelihood is low. Quite low. It's essentially groping in the dark. A good contrast is quantum computing. We know that's possible, even feasible, and now are trying to overcome the engineering hurdles. And people still think th…

> We don't know if AGI is even possible outside of a biological construct yet. This is key. A discovery that AGI is impossible in principle to implement in an electronic computer would require a major fundamental discovery in physics that answers the question “what is the brain doing in order to implement general intelligence?”

It doesn't have to be impossible in principle, just impossible given how little we understand consciousness or will anytime in the next century. Impossible for all intents and purposes for anyone living today.

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#63

Post by bee_rider »

mattnewton wrote: post #43
bee_rider wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we have a specific enough definition of general intelligence that we can exclude all non-human animals?

Why does it need to exclude all non human animals? Could it not be a difference of degree rather than of kind?

The post I was responding to had

> On the contrary, we have one working example of general intelligence (humans)

I think some animals probably have what most people would informally call general intelligence, but maybe there’s some technical definition that makes me wrong.

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#64

Post by [deleted] »

glitchc wrote: post #10

We don't know if AGI is even possible outside of a biological construct yet. This is key. Can we land on AGI without some clear indication of possibility (aka Chappie style)? Possibly, but the likelihood is low. Quite low. It's essentially groping in the dark. A good contrast is quantum computing. We know that's possible, even feasible, and now are trying to overcome the engineering hurdles. And people still think th…

[deleted]

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#65

Post by tshaddox »

AIPedant wrote: post #56
tshaddox wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't know if AGI is even possible outside of a biological construct yet. This is key. A discovery that AGI is impossible in principle to implement in an electronic computer would require a major fundamental discovery in physics that answers the question “what is the brain doing in order to implement general intelligence?”

It is vacuously true that a Turing machine can implement human intelligence: simply solve the Schrödinger equation for every atom in the human body and local environment. Obviously this is cost-prohibitive and we don’t have even 0.1% of the data required to make the simulation. Maybe we could simulate every single neuron instead, but again it’ll take many decades to gather the data in living human brains, and it woul…

> It is vacuously true that a Turing machine can implement human intelligence: simply solve the Schrödinger equation for every atom in the human body and local environment.

Yes, that is the bluntest, lowest level version of what I mean. To discover that this wouldn’t work in principle would be to discover that quantum mechanics is false.

Which, hey, quantum mechanics probably is false! But discovering the theory which both replaces quantum mechanics and shows that AGI in an electronic computer is physically impossible is definitely a tall order.

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#66

Post by mdp2021 »

gwern wrote: post #52
dcre wrote: post #40

The first premise of the argument is that LLMs are plateauing in capability and this is obvious from using them. It is not obvious to me.

It is especially not obvious because this was written using ChatGPT-5. One appreciates the (deliberate?) irony, at least. (Or at least, surely if they had asymptoted, OP should've been able to write this upvoted HN article with an old GPT-4, say...)

> this was written using

How do you know?

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#67

Post by tshaddox »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #62
tshaddox wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't know if AGI is even possible outside of a biological construct yet. This is key. A discovery that AGI is impossible in principle to implement in an electronic computer would require a major fundamental discovery in physics that answers the question “what is the brain doing in order to implement general intelligence?”

It doesn't have to be impossible in principle, just impossible given how little we understand consciousness or will anytime in the next century. Impossible for all intents and purposes for anyone living today.

> Impossible for all intents and purposes for anyone living today.

Sure, but tons of things which are obviously physically possible are also out of reach for anyone living today.

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#68

Post by mdp2021 »

Loughla wrote: post #8
sublinear wrote: post #4

Way out of touch. AGI is poorly defined and thus is a science "problem", and a very low priority one at that. No amount of engineering or model training is going to get us AGI until someone defines what properties are required and then researches what can be done to achieve them within our existing theories of computation which all computers being manufactured today are built upon.

It strikes me that until we fully understand human consciousness, we don't stand a chance of reaching AGI. Am I incorrect?

Intelligence (solving problems) does not require consciousness.

Re: AGI is an engineering problem, not a model training problem

#69

Post by mdp2021 »

atbpaca wrote: post #44

It's a research problem, a science problem. And then an engineering problem to industrialize it. How can we replicate intelligence if we don't even know how it emerges from our brains?

We do not «replicate».

We implemented computing without any need of a brain-neural theory of arithmetic.

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