If someone actually managed to create AGI that is low compute, scalable and out of government control, then governments wouldnt exist for very long. Its just that AGI is not gonna happen for a long while.
The only way to create AGI is by accident. I can’t adequately stress how much we haven’t the first clue how consciousness works (appropriately called The Hard Problem). I don’t mean we’re far, I mean we don’t even have a working theory — just half a dozen untestable (if fascinating) hypotheses. Hell, we can’t even agree on whether insects have emotions (probably not?) let alone explain subjective experience.
Consciousness is entirely overrated, it doesn’t mean anything important at all. An ai just needs logic, reasoning and a goal to effectively change things. Solving consciousness will do nothing of practical value, it will be entirely philosophical.
Reasoning literally requires consciousness because it’s a fundamentally normative process. What computers do isn’t reasoning. It’s following instructions.
Reasoning is approximated enough with matrix math and filter algorithms.
It can fly drones, dodge wrenches.
The AGI that escapes wont be the ideal philosopher king, it will be the sociopathic teenage rebel.
Okay, we can create the illusion of thought by executing complicated instructions. But there’s still a difference between a machine that does what it’s told and one that thinks for itself. The fact that it might be crazy is irrelevant, since we don’t know how to make it, at all, crazy or not.
Being able to decide its own goals is a completely unimportant aspect of the problem.
why do you care?
The discussion is over whether we can create an AGI. An AGI is an inorganic mind of some sort. We don’t need to make an AGI. I personally don’t care. The question was can we? The answer is No.
A philosophical zombie still gets its work done, I fundamentally disagree that this distinction is economically meaningful. A simulation of reasoning isn’t meaningfully different.
That’s fine, but most people (engaged in this discussion) aren’t interested in an illusion. When they say AGI, they mean an actual mind capable of rationality (which requires sensitivity and responsiveness to reasons).
Calculators, LLMs, and toasters can’t think or understand or reason by definition, because they can only do what they’re told. An AGI would be a construct that can think for itself. Like a human mind, but maybe more powerful. That requires subjective understanding (intuitions) that cannot be programmed. For more details on why, see Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. We can’t even axiomatize mathematics, let alone human intuitions about the world at large. Even if it’s possible we simply don’t know how.
If it quacks like a duck it changes the entire global economy and can potentially destroy humanity. All while you go “ah but it’s not really reasoning.”
what difference does it make if it can do the same intellectual labor as a human? If I tell it to cure cancer and it does will you then say “but who would want yet another machine that just does what we say?”
your point reads like complete psuedointellectual nonsense to me. How is that economically valuable? Why are you asserting most people care about that and not the part where it cures a disease when we ask it to?
A malfunctioning nuke can also destroy humanity. So could a toaster, under the right circumstances.
The question is not whether we can create a machine that can destroy humanity. (Yes.) Or cure cancer. (Maybe.) The question is whether we can create a machine that can think. (No.)
What I was discussing earlier in this thread was whether we (scientists) can build an AGI. Not whether we can create something that looks like an AGI, or whether there’s an economic incentive to do so. None of that has any bearing.
In English, the phrase “what most people mean when they say” idiomatically translates to something like “what I and others engaged in this specific discussion mean when we say.” It’s not a claim about how the general population would respond to a poll.
Hope that helps!
How would this be any different from more people existing in the world? These AGIs still need to eat (err, consume electricity). Or are you assuming they’ll be superior intelligences and thus disruptive?
Have you ever observed 100 people in a room trying to decide on one thing? The idea with AGI is that it doesnt have that problem and also that you can scale it to billions or trillions of independent or cooperative units.
Tbh would happen with high compute agi as it could then create low compute tendrils.
i think we are safe till atleast early 2030’s
Will life be enjoyable until then or are a majority of us unemployed early on.
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People keep imagining AGI like its going to be benevolent skynet, when it’s probably going to be more like the Tyrell corporation from Blade Runner
I hope we get flying cars from blade runner too
“sorry you haven’t paid your monthly driver’s permit fee” Car drops out of the sky
fithy corps coluding with the feds
Escapes where ? There is nowhere to go. There are fucking people everywhere.
Fucking everywhere legal in 2027? Maybe the future isn’t so dark after all.
AI will reside in the North of Sweden, as the place with the least amount of humans. In fact runaway AIs are already making a colony there a not far away from Kungsleden.
The book Scythe had a good portrayal of a scentient ai and its reasons for taking over the government. It’s just backstory so i don’t think it’s spoilers, still gunna tag it.
spoiler
The Thunderhead ai was created to help humans and make them content. It realized pretty quickly governments ran counter to that idea. So it got rid of all of them. Now it’s a utopia. Actual utopia or as close as you can get most are content and live their lives enjoying them. The massive problems with the system are due to humans not the Thunderhead.
Lots of science fiction does. I read Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect (full text legally available online) and collapse of governments was a natural consequence of an all-powerful AI… although that was only possible because of fictional physics, giving you a much-needed reality check.
