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0 pointsQuarrelsome9y ago0 comments

Sorry to be harsh, I just tend to be harsh as a push-back to the seemingly exceptionally popular belief that AGI is inevitable.

Its just lots of that stuff from the waitbutwhy article really rankles me: e.g. having an x-axis for "human advancement" and then only valuing recent developments while under valuing things like writing or the printing press or treating intelligence as an integer value where an AGI can keep multiplying its intelligence and become completely unassailable by humans. There's a lot of bollocks intertwined with people that hope for AGI and it upsets me. I feel like it devalues and undermines the current progress that is being made.

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5 comments · 4 top-level

AnimalMuppet9y ago· 1 in thread

What rankles me about waitbutwhy is that graph. It claims it's trying to show how exponential growth takes off faster than you expect based on the past (which is in fact a valid point). But it ruins it with that kink in the graph, which is completely untrue to exponential growth. It conveys the impression that "things are about to really take off just around the corner, but it's false to the actual argument being made.

In other words, he's lying with a graph in order to try to make his argument have more emotional impact. And I have a policy of taking lying as a serious disqualification of people who are trying to persuade me...

QuarrelsomeOP9y ago

what rankles me even more is that they're pretending to make a science based article with facts and logic founded upon a graph that is neither. Its offensive.

notahacker9y ago

Assuming it's this one: http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu... I don't think the waitbutwhy article rankles so much as makes me scratch my head and think "is this intentional parody?"

I'm particularly fond of the Back to the Future example of how rapidly and unpredictably technological progress was accelerating, which completely ignored the fact that Back to the Future had a sequel whose tongue-in-cheek version of 2015 based entirely on 1980s culture is pretty much dead on, bar the hovering/flying stuff we haven't got around to inventing yet.

arethuza9y ago

I've been reading breathless articles explaining that AGI is going to happen "real soon now" since the early 1980s - to a certain extent I actually believed this and this is what motivated me to get into AI research in the late 80s and early 1990s, which was pretty close to the point where "good old fashioned AI" was dying out.

My own view is that it's highly likely that we'll have something like AGI - but we might also find that it's not actually that useful, or really necessary, and anyway I suspect it will take a long time to get there (I'd guess 100-200 years).

Mister_Y9y ago

I think you have the right to be harsh when you see all these posts by people who don't have a strong knowledge on AI and you strongly believe in what you're saying and you have expertise in it. As I said I'm on your way of thinking! Thanks again for your answer

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