Genuinely, what makes people not believe in coming AGI?
I read quite a lot on hackernews but never encounter a strong post/comment against it, apart from the „what is marketing“ discussion.
Maybe people don’t bother because everyone is in their trenches, tough I don’t understand how people do not see the AGI coming.
What kind of doom, if any, will befall is something different of course.
I don’t want to believe there will be AGI in the next 5 years, but it sure is hard not to!
replyI think it's because people have different ideas of AGI. Some only expect general intelligence, while others also require weird speculative ideas, such as rapid self-improvement.
replyRight now, what seems to be missing from general intelligence is mostly the ability to learn from experience and continue operating in a useful way well beyond context window size. That might already be technically feasible, but probably not in a cost-effective way.
I don’t believe AI progress is a linear line that ends in “AGI”. I think the current way we create LLMs will be improved, and improved, and improved. But an LLM at its core is a predictive chain, not general intelligence.
replyWell, we can’t even clearly define consciousness, so who’s to say complex large-input statistical computation isn’t it?
replyI have no idea. Anyone claiming to is hubristic.
What does AGI mean is probably the sticking point for most. I'm inclined to call it AGI if they can create something currently matching SOTA where there is no difference between training and inference time, i.e. it can continuously learn. Without the model collapsing.
replyWouldn’t Occam’s razor say that the people speaking are highly motivated to continue being paid? Relying on their fear of future outcomes seems to be misplaced to judge the honesty of their statements.
reply> continue being paid
replyWhat I mean by Occam's Razor:
There are many assumptions that need to be true to link "they say they're terrified of AI" to "they get paid more / longer", in both their own minds and everyone else's. It's a bit of 4D chess that could go their way, but also could go 100 different ways.
In contrast, linking "they say it" to "they believe it" is simple.
Justifying “they believe it” isn’t so simple, however.
replyOccam’s razor doesn’t often explain not taking people for their worst and assuming a conspiracy theory
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