> If you described all the current capabilities of AI to 100 experts 10 years ago, they’d likely agree that the capabilities constitute AGI.
I think that we're moving the goalposts, but we're moving them for a good reason: we're getting better at understanding the strengths and the weaknesses of the technology, and they're nothing like what we'd have guessed a decade ago.
All of our AI fiction envisioned inventing intelligence from first principles and ending up with systems that are infallible, infinitely resourceful, and capable of self-improvement - but fundamentally inhuman in how they think. Not subject to the same emotions and drives, struggling to see things our way.
Instead, we ended up with tools that basically mimic human reasoning, biases, and feelings with near-perfect fidelity. And they have read and approximately memorized every piece of knowledge we've ever created, but have no clear "knowledge takeoff path" past that point. So we have basement-dwelling turbo-nerds instead of Terminators.
This makes AGI a somewhat meaningless term. AGI in the sense that it can best most humans on knowledge tests? We already have that. AGI in the sense that you can let it loose and have it come up with meaningful things to do in its "life"? That you can give it arms and legs and watch it thrive? That's probably not coming any time soon.
I think that we're moving the goalposts, but we're moving them for a good reason: we're getting better at understanding the strengths and the weaknesses of the technology, and they're nothing like what we'd have guessed a decade ago.
All of our AI fiction envisioned inventing intelligence from first principles and ending up with systems that are infallible, infinitely resourceful, and capable of self-improvement - but fundamentally inhuman in how they think. Not subject to the same emotions and drives, struggling to see things our way.
Instead, we ended up with tools that basically mimic human reasoning, biases, and feelings with near-perfect fidelity. And they have read and approximately memorized every piece of knowledge we've ever created, but have no clear "knowledge takeoff path" past that point. So we have basement-dwelling turbo-nerds instead of Terminators.
This makes AGI a somewhat meaningless term. AGI in the sense that it can best most humans on knowledge tests? We already have that. AGI in the sense that you can let it loose and have it come up with meaningful things to do in its "life"? That you can give it arms and legs and watch it thrive? That's probably not coming any time soon.