Why shouldn't I? Humans developed this intelligence naturally (as far as we know). Many people claim we're intelligent enough to repeat the process with artificial organisms, and guide it, and perfect it. I want to see it.
And btw in the Terminator novelizations it was clearly stated that Skynet was a very good optimization machine but lacked creativity. So it's actually a good benchmark: can we create an intelligent machine that needs no supervision but still has limitations (i.e. it cannot dramatically reformulate its strategy in case it cannot win, which is exactly what happened in the books)?
Just because someone can tell a convincing story, doesn’t mean reality (once technology catches up) will resemble the devices of that story. Science fiction is fiction, and unconstrained by the annoying restrictions of physical reality.
That’s the point of my flying car comparison. We HAVE flying cars: they’re called helicopters. Because as it turns out there is just no physical way to make a vehicle in the form factor of a car fly, except by rotary wing. But people will still say “where’s my flying car?” because they are hung up on reality resembling science fantasy, as you are.
We have AI. We even already have AGI. It just doesn’t resemble the Terminator, because The Terminator is a made up story disconnected from reality.
And this is why, I feel, I can never discuss with the AI fans. They are happy to invent their own fiction while berating popular fiction in the same breath.
No, we really don't have AGI. Feel free to point out some of humanity's pressing problems being trivially solved today with it, please. I'll start: elderly people care, and fully automated logistics.
The term, as originally defined, is for programs which are man-made (Artificial), able to efficiently solve problems (Intelligence), including novel problem domains outside those considered in its creation (General). Artificial General Intelligence, or AGI. That’s literally all AGI means, and ChatGPT absolutely fits the bill.
What you describe is ASI, or artificial super intelligence. In the late 90’s, 00’s, and early 10’s, a weird subgroup of AI nerds got it into their head that merely making an AGI (even a primitive one) would cause a self-recursion improvement loop and create ASI in short order. They then started saying “achieve AGI” as a stand in for “emergence of ASI” as the two were intricately linked in their mind.
In reality the whole notion of AGI->ASI auto-FOOM has been experimentally discredited, but the confusion over terminology remains.
Furthermore, the very idea of ASI can’t be taken for granted. A machine that trivially solves humanity’s pressing problems makes nice sci-fi, but there is absolutely no evidence to presume such a machine could actually exist.
You are addressing the wrong person if you think I give two hoots how many more acronyms will the AI area invent to conceal the fact that the only thing they actually achieved is remove a lot of artists from the job market.
I don't care how it's called. We don't have it. I am not "confused over terminology", I want to see results and yet again they don't exist. Let's focus on results.
> In reality the whole notion of AGI->ASI auto-FOOM has been experimentally discredited
Sure. Because we actually have this super-intelligence already and we can compare with it, right? Oh wait, no we don't. So what's your point? Some people gave up and proclaimed that it can't be done? Like we haven't seen historical examples of this meaning exactly nothing, hundreds of times already.
Look, we'll never be able to talk about it before you stop confusing industry gate-keepers who learned how to talk to get VC money and obfuscate reality with, you know, the actual reality in front of us. You got duped by the investor talk and by the scientists never wanting to admit their funding might have been misplaced by being given to them, I am afraid.
Finally, nope, again and again, we don't have AGI even if I accept your definition. Show me a bot that can play chess, play StarCraft 2, organize an Amazon warehouse item movements and shipping, and coordinate a flight's touch-down with the same algorithms / core / whatever-you-want-to-call it. Same one, not different ones. One and the same.
No? No AGI then either.
> Furthermore, the very idea of ASI can’t be taken for granted. A machine that trivially solves humanity’s pressing problems makes nice sci-fi, but there is absolutely no evidence to presume such a machine could actually exist.
The people in the bronze age could have easily said "there is no evidence we would be able to haul goods while only pressing pedals and rotating a wheel". That's not an argument for anything at all, it's a short-sighted assertion that we might never progress that's only taking the present and the very near future into account. Well, cool, you don't believe it will happen. And? That's not an interesting thing to say.
Other people didn't believe we could go to the Moon. We still did. I wonder how quickly the naysayers hid under the bed after that so nobody could confront them about it. :D
But anyway. I got nothing more to say to people who believe VC talk and are hell-bent on inventing many acronyms to make sure they are never held accountable.
I for one want machines that solve humanity's problems. I know they can exist. I know nearly nobody wants to work on them because everybody is focused on the next quarter's results. All this is visible and well-understood yet people like you seem to think that this super narrow view is the best humanity can achieve.
Well, maybe it's the best you can achieve. I know people who can do more.
In the novelizations it was written that Skynet could not adapt to humans not running away or not vacating territories after they have been defeated. One of the quotes was: "Apparently it underestimated something that it kept analyzing even now: the human willpower." I've read this as Skynet not being able to adapt against guerilla warfare -- the hit-and-run/hide tactics.
But the TL;DR was that Skynet was basically playing something like StarCraft as if it played against another bot, and ultimately lost because it played against humans. That was the "Skynet was not creative" angle in the novelizations.
In Terminator 1 Skynet looses because John Conner taught people how to fight the machines, but John Conner only knows this because Kyle Reese taught Sarah Conner how to fight the machines and she taught John Conner. But Kyle Reese only knows this because he was taught by John Conner- so there's no actual source of the information on how to fight the machines, it's a loop with no beginning or end.
I had a philosophy teacher who said this is evidence of divine intervention to destroy Skynet, essentially God told people through John Conner how to win, but a cut scene in Terminator 1 implies Skynet was also created by reverse engineering the chip in the destroyed Terminator- implying there's also no origin of the information on how to create Skynet and it's also an infinite loop.
Yeah, these discussions are fascinating but I'd still think it's not very hard to learn how to blow stuff up and sabotage assembly lines, given enough tries.
So it's not exactly an infinite loop IMO, it's more like that the first iteration was more crude and the machines were difficult to kill but then people learned and passed the information along back in time, eventually forming the infinite loop -- it still had a first step though, it didn't come out of nothing.
And btw in the Terminator novelizations it was clearly stated that Skynet was a very good optimization machine but lacked creativity. So it's actually a good benchmark: can we create an intelligent machine that needs no supervision but still has limitations (i.e. it cannot dramatically reformulate its strategy in case it cannot win, which is exactly what happened in the books)?