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AsheyDS t1_j3c78hd wrote

Reply to comment by BellyDancerUrgot in We need more small groups and individuals trying to build AGI by Scarlet_pot2

You're more concerned with the ML branch then, so maybe you think that's what's going to lead to AGI, but not even all ML researchers are convinced of that. There's a lot more to consider, like the rest of the AI field. People need to stop being discouraged by this talk of phds and math.

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BellyDancerUrgot t1_j3dtr99 wrote

Do share then what your beliefs are. What exactly is AI without math? Just curious since you have the tag of a researcher. What field are u working on? I’m not suggesting that a PhD is necessary, a degree is a indicator of ur work. But phd level work is necessary to achieve anything meaningful in this field. The post is very hand wavy and aimless. Andrew Ng and Khan academy is not enough to invent the next big thing however small it is. Read up on Mish activation. The guy who did that did so before even getting a masters degree. But that’s only because he is a genius who was capable of understanding grad math when barely out of high school.

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AsheyDS t1_j3e7r7c wrote

>Do share then what your beliefs are.

I do not have a phd, nor do I have a degree that would satisfy you, so my beliefs are meaningless. :) I didn't even get into this field until after college.

>What exactly is AI without math?

What is natural intelligence without math? Math is just a system of measurement, and one that as of yet hasn't defined every single thing. I get that we're talking about computers as the substrate, so math makes sense, but it's not the only way to define things, or enact a process. That said, I'm not suggesting ditching math, it will be integral to many processes, I'm just saying it doesn't have to be the main focus of work or study centered around cognition. That's what we're ultimately talking about here with AGI, not just mathematical processes. This is, unless you believe ML is the path to AGI, as many do.

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BellyDancerUrgot t1_j3efn9s wrote

I don’t have a PhD either lol. Your beliefs aren’t meaningless either. Nobody actually knows what breakthrough we might have next. I do consider chatgpt to be a breakthrough tbh (using RL to train an LLM). VQA was a breakthrough imo. GANs was also a breakthrough. All these came about in the same way as the post suggests but without hardware or funding u would never see all of it come together.

There’re people like Blake Richards working on the boundaries of neuroscience and AI but it’s hard to work on any of those fields without math as the underlying structure. Still, even if you approach it or want to approach it from an entirely new way it’s hard to do that without knowing the approaches that do exist which would require you to have a lot of math knowledge regardless. You can do that without a degree for sure tho , that wasn’t my point. It’s just super hard without guidance and the primary topic of this post is: working on smaller problems without any funding , I don’t see how that works and i don’t see any actual pragmatic answers here by op either.

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