Comment by marmaduke
8 years ago
I don’t think anyone here disputes the logical possibility, but rather that such systems are still far off, not as near as the singulariati would have us believe.
From the perspective of embedded cognitive systems, intelligence is not an abstract property but a faculty derived from an agent embedded in a world with an ability to act upon that world in specific ways. This is reiterated in cognitive linguistics by Lakoff’s metaphor work et al. I take this to mean that the question of AGI itself is missing the point. To wit all recent provoking demos of AI (Alpha Go, DOTA) are embedded within specific environments and actions of a model-specified agent. It is then extrapolated that AGI will appear automatically induced by a series of more and more competent AIs.
Incremental evolution as a means of indiction as we know from biology can take a long time, and the landscape is complex. Hence the view that it might be coming but not soon and not with a roadmap.
> not as near as the singulariati would have us believe.
I've seen the singularity described as "The Rapture for nerds", which is pretty apt. It's going to be amazing, the future is so bright, we won't have to worry about any problems plaguing mankind now, and it's just around the corner! Any day now! Aaaaaaany day now!
Exhausting. Maybe we'll get a future AI-run utopia a la The Culture. Maybe not.
> singulariati
I like this term. Going to use it any chance I get now.
Biology works slower generation wise than technology. If selfawarenes is based on emergent complexity in pattern recognizing feedback loops then technology can play through billions of scenarios in a short time. We dont need AGI for technology to be a problem. Technology at the intelligence level of a mouse with all its potential physical power through the systems it might have access to can be quite dangerous for humans.