@JayDee

> We don’t know what we’re doing, and we should really sort that out.

True. But the bigger problem is not the mythical and hypothetical “AGI/ASI” stuff that maybe will happen one day, but very real harms already being caused by misuse and misapplication of algorithmic and “AI”-based systems.

So that’s what I think we should be focusing on instead.

@lightstream also:

> The goal is not to recreate human cognition as if that’s some kind of holy grail. The goal is to make intelligent systems which can give results which are at least as good as what would be produced by a skilled and well-trained human working on the same problem

I don’t believe that’s the case, at least not for @ContrarianTrail higher up in the thread, based on their comments:

> Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the artificial version of human cognitive capabilities

@lightstream I wouldn’t, because I am not the one making claims about “AGI” being just around the corner.

That’s the thing, OpenAI and others benefiting from the hype make extraordinary claims – along the lines of “human-level AGI is just around the corner” – so they are the ones that need to define their terms.

You are asking all the right questions here (“which human are we talking about”), the point is that these questions should be answered by those who make such extraordinary claims.

@JayDee AI as the wide, specialized field you mention makes no claims about building anything with *actual* human-like intelligence, I feel. People who understand how the math and code work in these systems know better than to do that.

And yes, “AGI” debate is a philosophical one. The problem is it is not recognized as such, because of the AI hype. People seem to think that AGI is “inevitable” and “just around the corner”, because salespeople from companies that benefit from that hype say so.

@JayDee I didn’t say you are, I clarified in my later post. Sorry, should have been clearer.

I am vehemently agreeing with you here, in fact.

The context is the conversation above in the thread, where it was claimed that “AGI” is “pretty inevitable”.

And the point I’ve been making is:

1. we don’t have a good definition of what “intelligence” is, in the sense presumably used above;

2. if we decide to use a somewhat simplistic definition, the whole “AI” issue stops being all that exciting.

@JayDee so two things.

First: sure, we can redefine words in any way we want, but then:

1. talking about “AI” becomes much less interesting if it merely means “walking a decision tree based on data coming from external sensors”

2. the whole talk about “intelligence” becomes a bait-and-switch, as the conversation started with the term “intelligence” being used in the general sense we tend to apply to people and some animals.

@ContrarianTrail

> A chess engine is intelligent in one thing: playing chess

No. That’s not how the adjective “intelligent” works, outside of marketing drivel of course (“intelligent washing machine” etc).

> Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) is the artificial version of human cognitive capabilities

Can you give a definition of “intelligence” or “human cognitive abilities” that would allow us to somehow unequivocably establish that “X is intelligent” or “X has human cognitive abilities”?

@ContrarianTrail @JRepin and finally, there’s a question of whether we actually decide to pursue it.

Nuclear power was supposed to be the “inevitable” power source for all of humanity mere 50 years ago. But at some point we decided not to pursue that goal.

Cryptocurrencies were supposed to be “inevitable” replacement for the banking system.

And we *have* cryptocurrencies and nuclear power. These exist. As opposed to whatever nebulous concept hides beneath “AGI”.

@ContrarianTrail @JRepin well I guess somebody would first need to clearly define what “AGI” is. Currently it’s just “whatever the techbro hypers want it to be”.

And then there’s the matter (ha!) of your assumption that we understand all laws of physics necessary that “matter obeys”, or that we can reasonably understand them. That’s a pretty strong assumption: individual human minds are pretty limited and communication adds overhead, and we might reach a point where we’re stuck.

@mattblaze@federate.social you must construct additional pylons