There's no mystery to how prior civilizations hit collapse events when I read comments like this. Every system has a limit, if you don't believe this is the case, you'll likely hit it in catastrophic fashion.
In the year 2018, you'd think people would be more focused on higher pursuits and inquiries about the Universe than just a joy ride from life to death and a maximization driven social trend to see how much money you can make and spend in a lifetime.
Anytime prior civilizations have forgotten about the fundamentals or considered themselves to be so technologically advanced to be beyond the impact of nature, there usually is a reckoning and that reckoning usually occurs at the peak of society when resources are being improperly dedicated to vanity and idiocy. There's a reason the hallmark structures of past civilizations are erected pretty close to their demise.
The Sun goes through cycles we have yet to fully understand.
That alone could cause significant effects to the earth and its something we have zero control over. I'd think it would be a far better social culture to be focused on dedicating resources to exploring and studying the universe and fundamental nature therein than mining clown coins via bit flipping wasting energy/computing resources on a ponzi scheme. However, look how many billions are involved with this.. In a so called modern highly educated society.
As far as population goes, why does a human being feel entitled to have kids? Why are there so many poor individuals having kids? Why should we try to test the limit of nature's carrying capacity? Why do we continue to push the world population higher? We did we create economic models that depend on population growth? Again, a different kind of life from just popping out kids and enjoy the rides of life. A life of inquiry and the pursuit of understanding....
> There's a lot more room left for human growth on this planet
Until there's not or nature throws you a cyclical curve ball. See history for what the results are.
> There's no mystery to how prior civilizations hit collapse events when I read comments like this.
You're making my case for me. I'm sure there was some doom sayer in ancient Rome who predicted the world could never support more than 10 million people tops. Yet here we are at 7.7 billion and counting.
> In the year 2018, you'd think people would be more focused on higher pursuits [...]
You've clearly got some other agenda that you're trying to argue against. Feel free to try and tell everyone how they should live, but I'm not really interested. I was responding to claims of "overpopulation".
> Until there's not or nature throws you a cyclical curve ball. See history for what the results are.
Again, you're making my case for me. Sure plagues happened... I wouldn't be surprised if in 2200 some historian will look at the archives of messages like this and snicker you thought 7.7 billion was a lot. It also wouldn't shock me if once all the third world countries have birth control and health care that we find a natural equilibrium at 20-50 billion.
You make things wildly unaffordable.
You make the most basic need of a human being (a roof over their head a ponzi scheme speculative investment)
You destroy the middle class.
You plunge everyone into debt with over- financialization.
You play divisive social games to cement power structures finalizing in men vs. women politics.
You destroy the family unit.
You undermine men.
You push male guilt.
You push social trends for women to party through their most fertile years You convince women that long term monogamous relationships are prison...
You turn everyone on to Tinder and glorify transient lifestyles... All because such lifestyles make various corporations richer via higher consumption.. society be damned. Optimal profit at the expense of broader society... Up until broader societal conditions drag down corporations that made it so.
The cause and effect are obvious to anyone w/ two brain cells.
And just to show its all for the almighty dollar, millions of dollars are pumped into studies/research of this phenomenon only to avoid the elephants in the room. We call this modern society where we pretend to not know why things are the way they are. Society optimizes for certain things like profit above all else and there are a slew of negative outcomes or things that are harmed as a result.
Why would someone have a kid in the current environment? This process is pushed out to someone who either is quite wealthy and has no impact or is quite poor and is uncaring of the impact. The middle is hallowed out. It's why from anywhere from the first world EU to the US there is a big push for immigration. That too is steeped in economic factors and has little to do w/ a genuine interest in helping people. Instead of fixing core societal problems, the powers that be deem it easier to just pave over the domestic populous with new-comers who would willingly tolerate such conditions and birth new workers into the fold. The middle core of the population deems it ridiculous to have kids. The number crunchers see this as an impact to their precious economic models... and thus comes the political push to import people from places in the world who have kids in far more impoverished conditions and see 1st world countries as a step up.
Not sure how this comment will go here but that's just the plain reality. A reality people like to play pretend they don't know exists. A reality people make hordes of money to ignore and further. Humanity will pay a hefty price in the years to come for these stupid games we play. Historically, various reckonings have occurred when civilizations and empires play these stupid games. Then the cycle resets and is born again only to arrive at the same juncture when people stray far enough from sound principals.
Previously parents could obtain a house, finances for children and still be able to afford a decent quality of living in their early 20s. Middle class kids have seen what their parents obtained and are finding it hard to similarly have a house over their head that is their own.
They're now all forced to take on student debt or were conditioned to do so and with the majority of decent paying jobs (above minimum wage) requiring a degree for just an interview. People are resentful of it all with knowing how their parents had it and opting out of having kids for something more affordable like a pet. It's really messed up if you think how future little Alice or Bob are now replaced with a pet.
I'm not really buying into the idea of tinder is part of the blame. People did the same dating crap in the previous generations but it wasn't so in your face like now. I just think it has become the idea, when you're middle class it isn't financially worth having a kid and where you will then be living a lower class lifestyle to support your children; saving for their future with knowing how expensive a higher education will be for them. I feel like if society doesn't fix this soon, whenever things get changed the previous generation will riot or be extremely negative for what they missed out on (were forced into living without).
Sorry, who's "You" in this example? I don't remember doing any of these things.
Since you haven't presented any actual evidence, this sounds like storytelling. I'm sure it's a story that appeals to some demographic, given the upvotes, but that doesn't make it true. And insisting that it's obviously right to "anyone with two brain cells" definitely raises the skeptic flag for me.
I assumed the 'you' to refer to the capitalist system we live in, not particularly one person or group of people but the machine of capitalism that pushes for growth above all else.
In the west, all of these things happened under democratically elected governance. Thus one can say that it is what people chose to be. Economic progress and technology intensified individualism and childrearing fell way behind in the hierarchy of needs. That may explain why fertility rates are terrible in Germany, despite them having affordable and state-supported lives.
Democracy is more of a system where the choice for the "new generation" is made by their parents and older. The system falls apart if people become sociopaths when it comes to "needs" of the future generation.
Indeed. I don't see anyone born in the 80s/90s dictating policies or in politics. I see the same boomers that sold this country's middle class up the river still doing what they do best. Gray and white hair, wealth from a career of servicing companies, steps away from the grave and they still don't want to let go of the reigns for the "new generation". It's like a sick obsession they have with trying to control the world. Never stopping once to enjoy what they have profited from their enterprises... Seemingly aiming to dictate policy until they take their last breath.
The state of politics in this country is at trash tier levels.. Even more insane when you think of the trillions of dollars tied up in this circus and what it could do for American society if it was actually put to good use.
I see this as a system that started off with good intentions, order, and promise that eventually just gets ran down with clowns. Interestingly, a good number of 1st world countries have governance of similar characteristics right now. It's like they lost the narrative as to what they should be doing so just engage in a soap opera on a day to day basis to keep up appearances.. Meanwhile squandering trillions of dollars of tax payer money.
Children want a lot of things that aren't good for them. If they have bad parents or their environmental conditions are down-trotten enough, it's not a mystery of what becomes of the majority of them. Democracies are a viscous feedback loop which in modern times has been functioning at the highest levels based on corporate interest in lobbyist. It's a fit of bread and circuses. A system run down in the long run as all do. So, it's hard to definitively point the finger. However, it can be summarized as the collective. The question becomes more critically as to who alters the broader rules, game, and game state and who simply is just a peon player trying their best to optimize. When a problem festers long enough, it becomes systemic. When the environment becomes toxic enough, the individual player becomes as ruthless as those at the top albeit within their own scale. Take an honest look at the west and this is where we are at now. Most politicians do nothing for the greater good of the country besides waste tax payer money and in many cases do things that harm people's overall wellbeing. Trillions of dollars are siphoned out of people's pay checks and the basic infrastructure of the country is dilapidated. Education K-12 is a hollowed out mess. Our gateways to the internet are profiteer centers instead of public domain. Our healthcare system centers on profit maximization over patient health. Our food products are filled with cheap junk fillers that cause diabetes/cancer... Common sense telling people this for years only to find a decade later companies like Monsato did the obvious damage to society. No worries... They pay a fine that goes predominately to regulators and lawyers.
Economic progress occurred significantly in the 90s and early 2000s and it seemed the west was on a path towards brilliance. Then came the b.s wars .. Then came the greed that destroyed the middle class. Then came the over-financialization. Then came the unregulated housing fleecing (which is still going namely in the bay area). Then came the wave of Academic Institutions joining in on the free-for-all w/ insane inflation of tuition.
Technology meanwhile was solving problems. There was no need for insane tuitions/fees given that we had high speed internet and video anywhere. However, it was put under wraps.
Then comes the social junk for the masses in which a broad based information utility that could bring society to a higher level was turned into an information warfare tool.
We had economic progress. Technology intensified. Individualism really isn't all that pronounced. There is more group think than ever as masses of people became social media zombies. Critical thinking is gone. Families and long lasting wholesome interaction is gone. It's essentially a big manipulative profit maximization experiment gone wrong. There are no social standards guiding production. It's a free-for-all.
Social Media has had detrimental effects on people's psychology and mental health.
The obvious was obvious before these trends. They were ignored because profit was the central theme and the purpose was to maximize it. Things don't spontaneously just happen. They occur for a reason.
I've spent some time in Germany. It's expensive and the pay is lack luster. They don't have career mobility of ascension as people are staffed based on Age. Young people aren't having kids because they don't feel a deep connectivity to their home land. They don't see the need to preserve their culture/roots because culturally the country shunned and shamed it. So, with a globalist chancellor like Merkel they decided to decimate the local populist with a flood of immigrants all for the mighty dollar.
Socially, Germany killed off a range of cultures. Women don't have the connection they do to their kids as they do in other cultures... It would take me pages to detail. Suffice to say, the powers that be didn't allow Germany's population to slide for long did they? Nope.. The economic engine must persist. So, they're flooding it with immigrants w/ zero regard to the local populist. Its in this moment, you see what is being looked out for and why such conditions persist. It's the flawed economic engine over people and when this is the game being played .. People indeed become divided, selfish, and stop broad considerations of the long term and earth. Why invest in an entity of the future when it is clear that the world they will be born into will turn to crap? To a country trying to destroy its own culture and people? as evidenced by the trends and things you see before your very eyes? So yeah, a smart person goes towards 'individualism' and short term enjoyment will it is still to be had.
You are pointing out some real problems, but your attempt to pin them all on capitalism ("the almighty dollar") is incoherent and fallacious.
It's not "capitalism" turning young people to Tinder, which is dirt cheap. Capitalism as a system would much rather them start families and have lots of babies. Raising one kid yields far more purchases than a Tinder Plus subscription and a pack of prophylactics.
It is certainly not the "capitalism" strawman pushing aggressive gender politics. Most of these are based on Marxist studies, and closely associated with socialist and Marxist views and movements, that is - the opposite of capitalism.
In short, you invoked a bunch of very different problems with current American culture, bundled them together and strapped the collective label "capitalism" onto them, so now you have a single throat to cut to cure all that is ill with society. Unfortunately, it's not a single problem, and certainly does not have a single cause.
You're also ignoring agency completely. Nobody "pushed" people to use Tinder. They could keep dating seriously and getting married at 23 like they did in the 50s. They don't do that because they don't want to.
> Unfortunately, it's not a single problem, and certainly does not have a single cause.
Did they claim that? They didn't even use the word capitalism once. They simply mentioned that greed is also a problem, and you talk about how they supposedly blame it all on capitalism, and how that's just a convenient strawman to slap down.
> Nobody "pushed" people to use Tinder.
Yeah, because that's a simplification of a whole lot of stuff. It can be unpacked, but why even bother when you're not working along, and just go by a silly literal interpretation and point out how silly that is.
> They don't do that because they don't want to.
That's the start of the discussion, the comment was talking about why that is. And you just end with "it's fine that it is so because it is so", basically.
> Raising one kid yields far more purchases than a Tinder Plus subscription and a pack of prophylactics.
That was described by the parent post. That's why the push for immigration can be traced back to increased capitalistic opportunity.
> It is certainly not the "capitalism" strawman pushing aggressive gender politics.
Again, he did not describe that.
> You're also ignoring agency completely
No, he described it in sweeping generalities eg Why would someone have a kid in the current environment? - a direct reference to the wealth-education of the middle class, where you're smart enough to maximize, but not able to ascend leveraging those choices.
The primary issue with the rant is how he starts with "You" to mean a nebulous powers-that-be and then asks questions and makes statements from the perspective of the middle class.
Read it again for clarity. There's nothing about his comment that hasn't been said before.
I don't recall pinning them all on capitalism. That is a typical false classification someone engages in who wants to dismiss any real world analysis of the underlying causes. Then you go on to argue from this basis for the remainder of your commentary. I won't engage you further because you have misclassified my framing on purpose I could imagine and are falsely arguing against something I never stated. I detailed a range of different reasons why Birth rates are down. If you want to accurately refute any particular point you're more than welcome. But I will not engage your falsely framed retort in the least.
> You are pointing out some real problems
And yet.. you're trying to falsely refute them.
Meanwhile, you present nothing but 'Yeah you pointed out some real problems ... but dude.. it's totally nothing"
Agency is framed by social context. Does someone have the same Agency in America as Canada, Europe, Sweden, Japan, China? Do they express the same cultural/social trends? What happens when a country like China bans certain social activity? What about your agency then? What happens when China bans certain apps that have no social value whatsoever and will lead to a more impoverished state? What happens when a country is steeped in nonsensical divisive idiocy vs a mature country that doesn't tolerate it socially? Agency means nothing without context. Cultures are pushed through mainstream media in the west. If you deny that, you have something cognitively wrong. Agency means nothing when you don't exercise it and live your life based on populist trends which is what the majority of people do. Thus the term :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dominant_ideology
You began with :
> You are pointing out some real problems
And went off to lala land. I'm not a Marxist. I'm not an anti-capitalist. I'm a realist. Reply with something better.
To make an accurate projection or statement about something, it is generally necessary that you have a sound understanding of it. This is just my general intelligence speaking here. I see nothing of note that reflects that this person has a fundamental understanding of General Intelligence or has even been in the pursuit of it. Authoring an optimization algorithm suite doesn't mean you have an understanding of General Intelligence. A non-read before even clicking on the link. Two posts today about AGI. Seems the next hype train is arriving right on schedule and its banner will be (AGI).
Entrenched mindsets don't like for the flaws in their views to be highlighted. It's one of Humanity's most serious flaws. As far as AGI being 10-20 years away based purely on compute power, you can't make this statement accurately unless you have a firm understanding of the underlying algorithms that power human intelligence and by extension AGI. From there, you also need to have a formal education and deep industry experience with Hardware to know what its capabilities are today, what they will be in the future roadmap wise, and how to most efficiently map an AGI algorithm to them. I'd say that 0.1% of people have this understanding and nobody is listening to them.
> The real problem though (as I see it) is that the vast majority of the best and brightest minds in our society get lost to the demands of daily living. I've likely lost any shot I had at contributing in areas that will advance the state of the art since I graduated college 20 years ago. I think I'm hardly the exception. Without some kind of exit, winning the internet lottery basically like Elon Musk, we'll all likely see AGI come to be sometime in our lifetimes but without having had a hand in it.
They don't get lost so much as they become trapped for reasons due to systematic and flawed optimization structures found throughout society. All is not lost if one breaks out long enough to realize they can make certain pursuits if they are willing to make a sacrifice. The bigger the pursuit, the bigger the required sacrifice. Not many people are willing to do that in the valley when you have a quarter of a million dollar paycheck staring you in the face. You could of course make a decision to sacrifice everything one given day and you'd have 5 years of runway easily if you saved your money properly. Obviously, VC capital wont fund you. Obviously universities aren't the way to go given the obsession with Weak AI. Obviously no AI group will hire you unless you have a PhD and/or are obsessed with Weak AI. Obviously you might not even want this as it will cloud your mind. So, clearly, the way to make ground breaking progress is to walk off your job, fund a stretch of research yourself, and be willing to sacrifice everything. Quite the sacrifice? People will laugh at you. What happens if you fail? Socially, per the mainstream trend, you'll fall behind. If you have a partner, this will be even more difficult as the trend is to get rich quick, get promoted to management, buy a million dollar home, have kids, stay locked in a lucrative position at a company. And what of your pride? Indeed.. And therein is the true pursuit of AGI.
The winners are pushing fundamentally flawed AI techniques because it requires massive amounts of data and compute which is their primary business model. They wont succeed because they are optimizing a business model that is at the end of its cycle and not optimizing the pursuit of AGI.
AGI is coming and it is completely out of the scope of the current winners. If a person desires to pursue and develop AGI, they'd have to be bold enough to sacrifice everything... It's how all of the true discoveries are made for all of time and science. Nothing has changed but for reasons due to money primarily, when the historical learning lessons are far off enough people attempt to re-tell/re-invent the wheel in their favor.. Only to be reminded : Nothing has changed.
The individual discoverers change over time however for they learn from history.
Well what I'm saying is that we can derive your first paragraph purely with computing power. What we need are computers with roughly 100 billion cores, each at least capable of simulating a neuron (maybe an Intel 80286 running Erlang or similar), and a simple mesh network (more like the web) that's optimized for connectivity instead of speed. This is on the order of 100,000*100,000,000,000 = 1e16 transistors, or about 7 orders of magnitude more than an Intel i7's billion transistors. It would also be running at at least 1 MHz instead of the 100 or 1000 Hz of the human brain, so we can probably subtract a few orders of magnitude there. I think 10,000 times faster than today is reasonable, or about 2 decades of Moore's law applied to video cards.
Then we feed it scans of human minds doing various tasks and have it try combinations (via genetic algorithms etc) until it begins to simulate what's happening in our imaginations. I'm arguing that we can do all that with an undergrad level of education and understanding. Studying the results and deriving an equation for consciousness (like Copernicus and planetary orbits) is certainly beyond the abilities of most people, but hey, at least we'll have AGI to help us.
Totally agree about the rest of what you said though. AGI <-> sacrifice. We have all the weight of the world's 7 billion minds working towards survival and making a few old guys rich. It's like going to work every day to earn a paycheck, knowing you will die someday. Why aren't we all working on inventing immortality? As I see it, that's what AGI is, and that seems to scare people, forcing them to confront their most deeply held beliefs about the meaning of life, religion, etc.
You're focusing on an aspect of Neurons in which there isn't even an accurate understanding and attempting to make a direct mapping to computer hardware. This is framing w/o understanding and you should be able to clearly understand why you can't make analysis or forward projections based on it.
Video cards operate on a pretty limited scope of computing that might not even be compatible with Neuron's fundamental algorithm. The only thing SIMD has proven favorable towards is basic mathematics operations with low divergence which is why Optimization algorithm based NN function so well on them.
This is the entrapment many people in the industry fall for. The first step towards AGI is in admitting you have zero understanding of what it is. If one doesn't do this and simply projects their schooling/thinking and try to go from there, you end up with a far shorter accomplishment.
You can't back derive aspects of this problem. You have to take your gloves off and study the biology from the bottom up and spend the majority of your time in the theoretical/test space. Not many are willing to do this even in the highest ranking universities (Which is why I didn't pursue a PhD).
There is far too little motivation for true understanding in this world which is why the majority of the world's resources and efforts are spent on circling the same old time test wagons.. Creating problems then creating a business model to solve it. We are only fooling ourselves in this mindless endeavors. When you break free long enough, you see it for what it is and also see the paths towards more fundamental pursuits. Such pursuits aren't socially celeberated or rewarded. So, you're pretty much on your own.
> As I see it, that's what AGI is, and that seems to scare people, forcing them to confront their most deeply held beliefs about the meaning of life, religion, etc.
One thing about this interesting Universe is that when a thing's time has come it comes. It points to a higher order of things. There's great reason and purpose to address these problems now and its why AGI isn't far off. If you look at various media/designs, society is already beckoning for it.
You know, I find myself agreeing with pretty much everything you've said (especially limitations of SIMD regarding neurons etc). I'm kind of borrowing from Kurzweil with the brute force stuff, but at the same time I think there is truth to the idea that basic evolution can solve any problem, given enough time or computing power.
I guess what I'm getting at, without quite realizing it until just now, is that AI can be applied to ANY problem, even the problem of how to create an AGI. That's where I think we're most likely to see exponential gains in even just the next 5-10 years.
For a concrete example of this, I read Koza's Genetic Programming III edition back when it came out. The most fascinating parts of the book for me were the chapters where he revisited genetic algorithm experiments done in previous decades but with orders of magnitude more computing power at hand so that they could run the same experiment repeatedly. They were able to test meta aspects of evolution and begin to come up with best practices for deriving evolution tuning parameters that reminded me of tuning neural net hyperparameters (which is still a bit of an art).
Thanks for the insight on higher order meaning, I've felt something similar lately, seeing the web and exponential growth of technology as some kind of meta organism recruiting all of our minds/computers/corporations.
It mainly comes down to the software and algorithmic techniques. It's not something many people want to hear as there is a lot of money and effort placed on an alternative framing. If you believe it takes massive amount of hardware/compute, it favors the current billion dollar lucrative business of cloud computing at scale. If you are made to believe it takes 100s of top ranking PhDs because its so incredibly complex, you are more likely to value the groups pursuing it higher. If the techniques and white papers are all a convoluted mess of spaghetti, one becomes of the belief that this is an unworldly pursuit.
It is none of these things however. The hardware is already capable. The fundamental techniques that are popular and theories are the flawed. Essentially, you need to start over as Geoffrey Hinton said. Something no one wants to put effort into doing or fund.
So, indeed AGI is here today. It's just not within the frame of the populist efforts. An capable individual with the freedom of doing deep pondering and constructions w/o any outside influence is more likely to crack this puzzle than a room of PhDs all systemically subscribed to the same fundamentally flawed approach of Optimization algorithms.
As far as the compute goes, does anyone even truly spend the time to understand it anymore in this day and age of frameworks on frameworks? I mean truly understand it? And there lies to other fundamental problem. How can one make broad statements about the computational requirements of AGI when the most they know about the underlying hardware is an AWS config file?
Swaths of the industry have shut themselves out from ever developing AGI. Sadly, they're the groups w/ the most funding and backing because they represent the same flawed mainstream ideology as every other AI group.
It will be an outsider and the core theoretical approach is already resolved.
It mainly comes down to the software and algorithmic techniques.
I'm not convinced. The architecture of a computer, with its extremely fast CPU cores and its extreme bottleneck of a memory bus with a tiny cache set up in a hierarchy is radically different from the architecture of the human brain.
The brain is parallel on an unimaginably larger scale than anything we've ever built. The brain also doesn't put a wall between "storage" and "compute." I think there are tons of problems the brain solves easily with parallelism that would be bottlenecked by memory latency on a computer.
What are your thoughts on Starting over completely from scratch as Geoffrey Hinton has suggested? What are you doing as a group to attract and bring on such individuals? Does this occupy any portion of your efforts at OpenAI?
If you were given a demo of an AI system that uses a completely new/revolutionary approach towards various different problems with success, how open would you be to rethinking your position on 'Optimization techniques'?
Modeling seems as a stop-gap towards getting over the limitations of Weak AI. As I recall, this is what knowledge-based expert systems tried in a time's past and failed at because it's nothing but a glorified masking of the underlying problem with limited human inputted rulesets. I don't agree with Yann LeCun that the way forward to AGI is modeling. I feel like it's the best solution people worked up towards the limitations of Weak AI which were broadly and publicly acknowledged in 2017 and early 2018.
> The main limitation right now: the ideas are very computationally expensive.
This is because the fundamental core set of algorithms being used by the industry are fundamentally flawed yet favorable to big data/cloud computing.. A quite lucractive business model for currently entrenched tech companies. It's why they spend so much effort ensuring the broad range of AI techniques fundamentally stay the way they are.. because if they do, it means boat loads of money for them.
> So we'll need engineers and researchers to help us to continue scaling our supercomputing clusters and build working systems to test our ideas.
When you're attempting to resolve something and you are shown YoY that it isn't being resolved and requires even more massive amounts of compute, it means you're doing something wrong. It will be better to take a step back an re-evaluate your approach fundamentally. Again, what is the willingness you have to do so if shown something far more novel?
Accelerating the efficiency of an optimization algorithm doesn't get you AGI, this should be clear by now. As for fielding such systems, one quick way to destroy humanity to a degree is to turn everything into a glorified optimization problem which will no doubt be turned against people to maximize profit.
Did Artificial General Intelligence get redefined again towards something more short term? So, first AI is hijacked and hyped 50 ways to sunday.. Then came the apocalyptic narratives/control problem hype to secure funding for non-profit pursuits and research. Then, when it was realized that narrative couldn't go on forever. AGI was hijacked added to everyone's charter and a claim was made that it will be made 'safe'. Now, AGI's definition is getting redefined to the latest Weak AI techniques that can do impressive things on insane amounts of compute hardware. How can you ever achieve AGI if this is the framing/belief system the major apparatus of funding/work centers on? Where is the true pursuit of this problem? Where are the completely new approaches?
One cannot rule out something unless they've spent a concerted amount of time dedicated solely to trying to understanding it. If there is no fundamental understanding of Human intelligene, what is anyone frankly talking about? or doing?
I have yet to hear a cohesive understanding of human intelligence from various different AI groups. I have yet to hear a sound body of individuals properly frame a pursuit of AGI. So, what is everyone pursuing? There seems to be no grand vision or lead wrangling in all of these scattered add-on techniques to NN. I do see a lot of groups working on weak AI or chipping away at AGI like featuresets with AI techniques making claims about AGI. Everyone has become so obsessed with iterating that they fail to grasp the proper longer term technique for resolving a problem like AGI.
Void from the discussion are conversations on Neuroscience and the scientific investigation of Intelligence. There's more sound progress being made in the public sector on concepts like AGI than in the private sector. Mainly because the public sector knows how to become entrenched, scope, and target an unproven long term goal and project.
The hype as far as I see it is clearly distinguishable from the science. Without honest and sound scientific inquiries, claims in any direction are without support. Everyone's attempting to skip the science and pursue engineering in the dark with flashy public exhibitions namely because of funding.. You can't exit such a room and make sound claims about AGI. If a group claims they are pursuing AGI, I expect almost all of their work to be scientific research pursuing an understanding.
That being said, it appears no one is interested in funding or backing such an endaevour. Everyone states they want to back/invest in such a group on paper but when it comes down to it the money isn't there, they obviously are targetting shorter term goals/payouts, and/or don't frankly know what type of pursuit or group of individuals are required. No one wants to take the time to understand what such a group would look like. No one wants to make a truly longer term bet. This is why things have been spiraling in circles for years.
So, as it has been stated time and time again.. AGI will come and it will come from left field.
There are individuals who truly care to pursue and develop AGI and they're willing to sacrifice everything to achieve it. If no funding is available, they'll fund themselves. If groups wont accept them because they aren't obssesed with deep learning or have a PhD (clearly the makeup that only results in convoluted weak AI), they'll start groups themselves.
Passion + Capability + lifelong pursuit is how all of the great discoveries of time have come to us. The mainstream seemingly never understanding such individuals, supporting them, or believing them until after they've proven themselves. No pivots. No populist iterations. A fully entrenched dedication towards achieving something until its done.
So, no.. you can't rule out AGI in the near term because there is no spotlight on the individuals or groups with the capability to develop it on such time horizons and the thinking just frankly isn't there in celeberated groups with funding. Everyone's in the dark and its an active choice and mindset which causes this.
Geoffery Hinton says start all over.... Yann LeCun raises red flags.
No one listens. No one acts. Everyone wants a piece of the company that develops the next trillion dollar 'Google' like product space centered on AGI but no one wants to spend the time to consider what such a company would be, what is human intelligence, who is looking at it in a new way from scratch as some of the most important people in AI have stated. So, you see... This is why the unexpected happen. It is unexpected because no one spends the time or resources necessary to cultivate the understanding to expect its coming.
I'm an active player with enough hours logged to interpret the game. That being said, the observations should also be obvious to even the most novice player. I don't need a commercialized and obviously favorable and biased stream of commentary clouding a much more sound analytical capability. I'm pretty sure they're not going invite commentators that point out the obvious reality as to what is going on. Per the commentators, bot like behavior gets extra positive humanized characterization and is marked as intelligent. Whereas snowball-cheese is known as the lowest tier and least intelligent strategy in the game. There's even a set of memes in the community for people who attempt such strategies.
People need to start doing more critical analysis of their own and stop relying on commercialized and biased information and commentary when settling on an viewpoint. Watching others play only gets you so far in understanding. When you play and you see what I'm saying for yourself, you can skim through the provided clips and understand exactly what's going on.
The fact that this continues to get hyped up vs someone stating what's going on is plain sad.
