I think there's noone alive today who has any idea how we are going to go from
where we are today, to AGI.
Recent advances are remarkable- but much more so if you're a specialist. The
impact on most peoples' lives is much smaller (and it comes primarily from dumb
automation, rather than actual intelligence).
Machine learning is not enough to get to AGI: relying on huge amounts of data
and processing power is just not a sustainable way to keep increasing your
capabilities.
All the success stories of the last 10 years are at least 20 years old (case in
point: RNNs). Most of those successful techniques were found by sheer blind luck
(famous example: backprop was not invented in the ANN community; it took twenty
years for the idea to percolate all the way to them).
In the end nobody currently alive has a clue how we can get to AGI, or if that
is even possible. Chances are, it will take many, many generations until we do-
or a sudden, gigantic paradigm shift, of the kind that comes once every couple
of centuries- think Newton or Einstein. Except AI is not physics. In statistical
machine learning there is very little theory to guide the way, so people just
try things hoping that something will work. And that's no way to make a quantum
leap.
In this situation, to talk of the dangers of AGI is at least premature. Yes,
it's not completely impossible that AGI will happen in our lifetimes. The same,
however, can be said of an alien invasion. Should we start discussing setting up
planetary defenses, when we haven't even found sign of alien life, yet?
By all means- let's have a conversation. There are people around whose job it is
to have that sort of conversation. But let's all be aware (and let those people
also be aware) that the conversation is most probably a couple hundred years
early and by the time it becomes truly relevant, things will have advanced so
much that it will just look pointless.
I think there's noone alive today who has any idea how we are going to go from where we are today, to AGI.
Recent advances are remarkable- but much more so if you're a specialist. The impact on most peoples' lives is much smaller (and it comes primarily from dumb automation, rather than actual intelligence).
Machine learning is not enough to get to AGI: relying on huge amounts of data and processing power is just not a sustainable way to keep increasing your capabilities.
All the success stories of the last 10 years are at least 20 years old (case in point: RNNs). Most of those successful techniques were found by sheer blind luck (famous example: backprop was not invented in the ANN community; it took twenty years for the idea to percolate all the way to them).
In the end nobody currently alive has a clue how we can get to AGI, or if that is even possible. Chances are, it will take many, many generations until we do- or a sudden, gigantic paradigm shift, of the kind that comes once every couple of centuries- think Newton or Einstein. Except AI is not physics. In statistical machine learning there is very little theory to guide the way, so people just try things hoping that something will work. And that's no way to make a quantum leap.
In this situation, to talk of the dangers of AGI is at least premature. Yes, it's not completely impossible that AGI will happen in our lifetimes. The same, however, can be said of an alien invasion. Should we start discussing setting up planetary defenses, when we haven't even found sign of alien life, yet?
By all means- let's have a conversation. There are people around whose job it is to have that sort of conversation. But let's all be aware (and let those people also be aware) that the conversation is most probably a couple hundred years early and by the time it becomes truly relevant, things will have advanced so much that it will just look pointless.