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quietIntensity t1_iw2rbfc wrote

I feel like there is no substance to this article. It's all very vague and hand wavy. In reality, the leap from specialized AI to generalized AI is enormous, like the difference between traveling to the moon and traveling to Mars. We put men on the moon 53 years ago, we might send people to Mars in a couple more decades.

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stangerlpass t1_iw33anx wrote

With the first two sentences you described your average futurology article

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cornerblockakl t1_iw3q8wd wrote

Comparing actual artificial intelligence to the industrial revolution is funny. It shows a complete lack of understanding of intelligence. Our own “industry” is mostly piddily manipulation of Newtonian physics and some very intelligent people using thought experiments to describe observations of “things.” Ex. Gravity, electricity, light, magnetism. The vast and deep secrets of the universe are currently just that. And yet what we do know compared to what we have created as “intelligent” is simply not on the same scale. Our machines are truly dumb imitators that might play chess well but can’t create chess. You will know when we create intelligence when some of it commits suicide. That is the true test of awareness/intelligence.

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CIeaverBot t1_iw2vgt8 wrote

This. Actually achieving artificial general intelligence would cause a technological leap similar to the industrial revolution. We're not even close, and the lines between tech journalism and SciFi wishful thinking are blurry at best in this area.

All the AI we have is weak AI, and how to create strong AI is a puzzle that might not be solved within this century. Articles like this happily skip the "How" and quickly move on to paint an exciting image of what will come once strong AI is real.

What this text says on the "How" is generalized technobabble with little substance. Increasing computing power doesn't create strong AI in the same way better and more fuel doesn't teach you how to drive a car. And improved weak AI for speech recognition and computer vision doesn't suddenly merge into strong AI that combines those functions while displaying actual intelligence in terms of reasoning, planning, learning and communicating.

The entire industry already has a hard time creating weak AI that solves multifacetted issues within economic boundaries of efficiency and quality - like autonomous driving, speech translation and text creation without need for human editing.

We make dolls that have a hard time doing single basic tasks. And articles like this go off about how Pinocchio is just around the corner. It's a bad sales pitch aimed at idiots.

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SplinterPizza t1_iw873dk wrote

I don't think your analogy works. We could have put people on Mars 40 years ago if we wanted to.

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quietIntensity t1_iw8b8a3 wrote

And we have the computing power for generalized AI now, but actually getting it to work and do what we want, turns out to be far more complicated. If we had dedicated the money and time necessary to make it happen, maybe, MAYBE, we could have pulled it off. But, nothing is that simple, and it isn't just the US, no one else has sent any living being to Mars and brought it back home yet either.

There are a lot of engineering challenges in sending people safely to Mars and returning them safely to Earth, far more than involved in the round trip to the Moon. The solutions to a huge amount of those challenges exist in a state more like "we think this will work, but we haven't gotten the money to test it out yet", instead of proven technology that can get the job done. Factor in the engineering principle that whatever your estimate of time and resources required is to complete the project, multiply that by 2, maybe 4, and you're going to be closer to reality.

People forget that accomplishing huge things is more than just the engineering and production involved. There are politics, logistics, HR, facilities, and PR campaigns to get support for funding a space mission instead of using those resources to solve other major issues that many would prioritize above space sciences.

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dantemp t1_iw8zv7c wrote

More like traveling to the moon and traveling to Andromeda. Agi may be impossible without giving the ai feelings at which point you are just creating a new living being and the whole thing becomes like slavery with a lot of extra steps.

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