Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

facebook.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

81–90 of 930 posts

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#81

Post by drcode »

Impossible wrote: post #50
vecplane wrote: post #19

I don't understand how he could contribute to the field of AGI research from home, by himself, and maybe with his son. It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

Carmack built rockets and id bought $100Ks of NeXT machines to make Doom so I wouldn't put it past him to have incredible amounts of hardware... even at home. Considering his position at Facebook and that he is industry famous he probably has access to data and cloud resources that a researcher outside of OpenAI, Nvidia, Google, etc. normally wouldn't have access to. He could also raise money relatively easily to pur…

What would be awesome is if he just said one day "I need 100 million dollars for my AGI project to buy hardware, anyone who wants to share in a 20% cut of the business just send funds to bitcoin address ### or ethereum address ###". He would be fully funded within an hour, probably.

Unfortunately that could never happen because of the SEC.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#82

Post by hmmmhmmmhmmm »

catalogia wrote: post #62
pyentropy wrote: post #33

Progress in AI is due to data and computational power advances. I wonder what kind of advances are needed for AGI. 1. Biological brains are non-differentiable spiking networks much more complicated than backpropagated ANNs. 2. Ion channels may or may not be affected by quantum effects. 3. The search space is huge (but organisms aren't optimal and natural selection is probably local search) 4. If it took ~3.8b years t…

From what I understand, quantum effects being essential to the process is a fringe belief. Penrose is probably the most famous 'serious person' (sorry Deepak Chopra) to espouse the idea, but I'm inclined to believe that might be a Linus Pauling/Vitamin C sort of scenario. Penrose started from the perspective of believing there must be quantum effects, then began fishing for physical evidence of it.

One interesting hypothesis, re: lithium isotopes in Posner molecules: https://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/sites/default/files/users/mpaf/p17...

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#84

Post by throwawayhhakdl »

vecplane wrote: post #19

I don't understand how he could contribute to the field of AGI research from home, by himself, and maybe with his son. It's the kind of problem that requires incredible amounts of data, hardware, and theory to make any progress. Wouldn't it make more sense for him to join a cutting-edge team, like DeepMind or OpenAI?

Deepmind and openai are probably not on a reasonable track to AGI. IMO if we ever make an AGI it wont actually be especially good at things. An AGI, like humans, would probably be pretty bad at math naturally. You could get one to be great at math, but first getting great at math and backing into general intelligence is probably impossible.

Substitute math for anything you want.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#85

Post by catalogia »

whamlastxmas wrote: post #55
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You guys really get high on your own supply don't you? It's a toss-up these days whether something from computer science or a programmer will either enhance or erode the human experience and quality of life.

I think you're on the wrong site if you're wanting to criticize software development as a career and suggest it does more harm than good

I can't think of a better site for him to make such arguments. What's the point of such criticism if the subjects of the criticism never read it?

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#86

Post by h5eath5eahj »

nafizh wrote: post #37

This is so vague as in borderline sarcasm. Okk, it’s AGI but really, what is it? Reinforcement learning? Combining symbolic AI with modern advances? Deep learning theory? AGI is a vacuous term. And no one knows which path would lead to something similar to human intelligence. That itself is a matter of research.

Hopefully short term includes going on Lex Fridman's podcast

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#87

Post by K0SM0S »

bronz wrote: post #26

i say this with respect and humility, but i am very surprised at the naivete with which John addressed the subject of AGI. he is so casual about it -- not only the idea of working on it but also the idea of it existing at all. he seems oblivious to the gravity of that discovery. it is not just "very valuable," it will be earth shattering and probably wipe out humanity. and its his side-project. and his son will help…

I'll say this: I'd prefer if the brightest minds approached the matter from the "AI safety" angle (a sub field concerned with building not just AI but "safe" AI, ie that we can control or understand in a practical manner).

Because that's really where the line of human history will be drawn if AGI and above becomes real. AI safety, how advanced we are in it, will directly map to civilization's progress or endangerment as a result of AI.

Edit: this is already true with regards to "psychological safety" from undue influence or outright manipulation with motive (usually financial) by current "ANI" algorithms (newsfeeds, "recommendations", ads, etc). It's a real topic that reduces to human psychological freedom, freewill. It's a BIG topic.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#88

Post by teawrecks »

glofish wrote: post #56
yaseer wrote: post #28

John Carmack seems like a guy that would've made fundamental contributions to science, had he been born a century before. Computer science now occupies the place physics once did, in its impact on moving the world forward. Best of luck to him, I look forward to seeing what he produces!

why would being born in the current century preclude one from making fundamental contributions? You are making a common mistake of assuming that just because someone is good at something like programing computers the same skill would translate identically to a completely different domain. If anything he is lucky to have been born in an era where his skill of programming computers could be put to use - otherwise his t…

He's "good at programming" like Galileo was "good with telescopes." Computers, telescopes, hammers, they're all just tools, and Carmack has proven himself as far more than just a handyman.

He's the kind of person where, if you show him what you're working on and he doesn't understand it, you probably need to go back to the drawing board.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#89

Post by nikkwong »

I'm sure he knows his stuff, and is venturing into this knowing that there's somewhat of a "hard problem" to be solved here; serious proponents of AI like Kai-Fung Lee have stated that AGI may never be possible.

The fact that he's making a public statement like this leads me to believe he may already have some novel solutions on how to tackle the problem. We won't be expecting to be seeing the same old parlor tricks coming out of John Carmack. He is already on the forefront of this stuff after all.

That's exhilarating but also terrifying. Our still-barbarian level human systems are still nowhere near ready to deal with the socioeconomic problems that may arise with AGI.

Re: John Carmack: I’m going to work on artificial general intelligence

#90

Post by akira2501 »

pyentropy wrote: post #33

Progress in AI is due to data and computational power advances. I wonder what kind of advances are needed for AGI. 1. Biological brains are non-differentiable spiking networks much more complicated than backpropagated ANNs. 2. Ion channels may or may not be affected by quantum effects. 3. The search space is huge (but organisms aren't optimal and natural selection is probably local search) 4. If it took ~3.8b years t…

> gene editing

Gene expression is often tied to the environment the organism is in. Mere possession a gene isn't enough to benefit from it. Some expressions don't take effect immediately, but rather activate in subsequent generations.

Epigenetics is a whole equally large layer on top of this system. A single-focus approach may not be sufficient, and even if it is, it's not likely to cope with environmental entropy very well.

Post reply on HN